Something Called Justice
by Argentum-LS
Summary: A headless body tests Henry and Jo's developing relationship, and makes Henry question his role in protecting Richie and Liam's world from outsiders. Story #2 in the Something Called Forever universe. Denial AU. Henry/Jo.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Thanks to htbthomas for the cheerleading and beta reading on this story. This is how she spent her November, egging me through 50K of Highlander/Forever crossover stories. Any remaining mistakes are on me. As always, questions, comments, concrit, and squee are always welcome. I've included some notes on_ Highlander _at the end of this chapter for anyone curious as to how my story fits into the canon._

 **Something Called Justice**

by LadySilver

No day could be complete without a cup of coffee and a moral dilemma.

"It's a mess in there," Jo informed him when Henry arrived at the construction site. She huddled deeper into a coat that, although thick, wasn't enough against the late-winter morning. Her brown hair was already wind-tossed and her cheeks reddened, yet she still managed a smile that was just for him. "I've never seen anything like it." She handed him one of the two cups she'd been holding and pressed her own to her forehead, which told Henry more about how bad the scene was than any description could have.

"What are we looking at?" Henry asked, turning so that a gust of wind hit his back instead of his face. The scarf he'd wound around his neck protected him from the worst, while the cup now in his hands offered the promise of comfort ahead—though Jo's greeting suggested that the comfort would have to wait. In his time as a medical examiner, and his much longer time researching death, he'd seen enough variety of blood and gore to inure him to all but the worst crime scenes.

"We have one dead," Jo answered. Before Henry could comment on how that didn't sound so bad, she added, "and a whole hell of a lot of vandalism."

The construction workers had arrived on the site at their scheduled time that morning to find that someone had broken into the office floor they were renovating and...well, they couldn't guess what the vandal had intended to do.

"The generator exploded," Jo narrated, as she walked him past the tape and into the building. "So did the propane tanks, every can of paint and paint thinner, the light bulbs, the batteries in the flashlights, and most of the electrical work in the walls. The bomb squad and arson investigator are trying to figure out a point of origin. The working theory is a lighting strike." She raised an eyebrow at Henry, trusting him to spot the problem with the theory.

Henry understood what she was getting at right away. "We haven't had rain in a week," he responded. "The skies were clear last night and this morning." He'd gone for a long walk the previous night, taking advantage of a brief warm spell before the new cold snap arrived—a stroll for the constitution, as people used to say—and had bemoaned the lack of visible stars thanks to the light pollution. The moon had still been visible, though. He'd seen no clouds, had not had any reason to consider taking his umbrella, much less to regret not taking one. "I assume the victim was electrocuted?"

"That's really not for me to say," Jo responded, "however, I don't think so." She pushed past a paint-spattered sheet of plastic that separated one room from the next and revealed the body. In life, he would have been a handsome, fit man in his late-teens or early-20s, with olive skin and curly dark hair. Now, he lay prone on the floor, legs bent as if it had dropped from a standing position. His head lay a foot away, staring blankly at the wall.

There was barely any blood, which wasn't the first hint Henry saw that this was an unusual death—severed arteries should have caused extensive blood splatter unless the wound had been cauterized immediately—but it was the most prominent by its absence.

Henry took a sip of his coffee as he sought out the secondary details that should help him develop a narrative of what had happened. "Yes, I see the difficulty," he said. "Our man died suddenly, though not without a fight. You'll note the wounds to his stomach and left arm, and, of course, the one that killed him. They were made with something sharp, perhaps a knife or a..."

"Or?" Jo prompted.

"A sword," he finished. The coffee churned in his stomach as he started to understand what he was looking at. Ever since one of the corpses in his morgue had abruptly returned to life, and Henry had learned how much more extensively immortality existed than he'd ever imagined, he'd suspected that he'd inevitably find himself at a crime scene just like this one. He bit down on the inside of his cheek, forcing the calm that would let him continue his initial analysis.

Oblivious to his thoughts, Jo threw an imploring look at paint-spattered ceiling. "Again?!" For a second, he thought she did have access to his thoughts, until he realized that she was likely remembering the case the previous year where the cab driver had been stabbed to death with a sword. Its uniqueness had made an impression on her. "What's with people running around this city with swords?"

Despite his unease, Henry's mouth quirked at this demonstration of Jo's 21st century sensibilities, as well as her observation that had more truth than she knew. "They are very effective weapons," he reminded her. "A properly sharpened sword can kill instantly, as well as silently, even if the intended victim is wearing Kevlar." He didn't mention what an improperly sharpened sword could accomplish.

"Yeah, I can see that," Jo answered, taking in the body that had so effectively been rendered headless without any of the myriad people who'd passed by the site having the least idea what was going on behind the plastic sheeting.

The sword wouldn't be here. Somehow Henry knew that without bothering to look for it. Searching the shadows along the walls, he found the next best thing: a black long coat that had been tossed aside, never to be reclaimed. Henry shook out the coat, mentally measuring its size against the height and girth of the body, while also confirming the presence of a sword sheath in the lining. Both pieces of information matched, and Henry understood that he now had a much bigger problem than solving the crime.

"We'd better get him down to the morgue where I can examine him in better lighting," he said, doing his best to keep his tone neutral.

"You know something," Jo accused.

 _Yes_ , Henry thought. _I know how he died; I know why he died; and…._ He drew another sip of coffee while he debated acknowledging the last part. Since he didn't make a habit of lying to himself, he allowed an internal sigh and the rest of the thought: _I likely know who killed him._ The question is: what was he going to do with this information? _This_ body would not be getting up and letting itself out of the morgue, and with the police already involved, he couldn't do anything to stop the investigation.

"I know that anything I say now would be so speculative that it might taint your investigation," he hedged. "Consider the lack of blood. The killer might have taken the time to clean it up, but how could he do that without also touching all the other damage?" He indicated all the paint and broken glass, and the set of boot prints that clearly tracked through them. "And why wouldn't he have cleaned up the evidence that he was here?"

Jo was nodding along by the time he finished, though she didn't look convinced. "So you're saying that the killer is a 'he'? Got anything we can use to start narrowing the pool of suspects?"

Henry gave her one of his small smiles as a silent apology for the observations they both knew he was withholding. She returned it with a searching look. Her brown eyes had become so adept at breaking through his defenses and seeing what he didn't want her to see that he had to turn away before she made him crack.

She read the movement as the sign of guilt that it was. "I'm not going to like what you tell me, am I?"

"No," he answered. "I can honestly say that you're not." Because it was his job, and so he could keep not looking at her, he hunkered down next to the corpse and inspected it in the context of the scene in which it had died.

Jo normally would have come over to prod him for more information or to banter around her thoughts on what had happened. Today, she stepped back and let him work.

And he did; he took in everything from the man's rubber-soled work boots with its new cotton laces, to the blood-stained slash across the fabric of the trousers' upper right thigh that had no corresponding injury beneath it, to a hand that was still curled as if around the hilt of the sword it had been holding when he lost the fight. The more he saw, the more he knew that this case was going to test all his resources.

Worse, it was going to test his friendships.

* * *

At lunch, Henry slipped out and headed across town. The church was open, as he'd expected, but it was busier than he'd thought a church would be at noon on a work day. At least a dozen people sat in the pews, reading, praying, or just enjoying the peace and quiet of the building. Henry worked his way up the aisle, one eye drawn to the stained glass windows that cast their colors across the interior, while still scanning the building's occupants for the person he sought. He didn't see him; he didn't see any priest in attendance. He was just turning around to go check the rectory when the opening of a narrow wooden door off to the side caught his attention. A young woman emerged, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. She cast him a wan smile as she passed. Churches this size were bound to have more than one active priest, but he knew the one he was looking for would take this duty, if given an option.

All Henry knew about Catholic confession, he'd learned from reading and, later, watching television. Having been raised an Anglican in a time when Anglicans and Catholics each thought the other to be the worst kind of evil, he'd never been to confession himself. And he still wasn't going, he told himself, thought he did have some sins to get off his conscience. No one else was waiting, so he slipped into the box and took a seat on the hard wooden bench inside. Through the screen, he could see the profile of the waiting priest. The haircut was right, as was the shape of the nose.

Deciding to take a risk, he ventured, "Father Liam?"

Fabric rustled as the priest shifted to see through the screen. Henry leaned forward to aid in the identification.

"Henry," came the surprised answer. "I didn't expect to see you here. Am I to believe that you've come around to the Catholic faith?" The Irish lilt confirmed who the priest was.

Henry shook his head. "No. I'm afraid that I've drifted away from religion over the last few years."

A beat of silence followed, then a concerned: "So what brings you to the confessional?"

"I needed to talk to you about a body that was found this morning." Henry drew a breath and added the relevant detail: "He'd been decapitated."

Father Liam's own head dipped down as he processed what Henry'd said. In the months they'd known each other, their conversations had ranged over a breadth of topics that would put an encyclopedia to shame, but this was new territory. "This isn't the place." He stood up, and Henry took that as his cue to also stand. "I'll meet you in the cemetery behind the church. Do you know where it is?"

"I can find it," Henry answered.

Henry got there first. It was a small cemetery with stones that dated to the founding of the church, back when this part of New York City was still farmland and space was plentiful. The tombstones were worn, in some places canted, but the graves themselves were well-tended. No modern person would have reason to come here unless they were doing a genealogy project, and today no one was. He found a place under a tree that was possibly as old as he was and leaned against the trunk, inhaling the scent of burgeoning leaves. Were it not for the business at hand, he'd have enjoyed this bit of solitude.

Liam came into view a moment later. "I apologize for keeping you waiting," he said. "I had to find someone else to take my place in the confessional." He'd also changed his clothes, trading out his cassock for a thick white sweater. He joined Henry under the tree, let the rumble of traffic and the cawing of seagulls wash over them for a minute, then said, "Tell me about the body."

Henry did, explaining as quickly as he could what he'd observed. "He was like you, wasn't he?" he concluded. He was already sure of the answer, but he wanted it confirmed.

"It sounds like it. I'd be very surprised to discover otherwise."

"Could you come down to the morgue and identify him?"

With a slight shake of his head, Liam said, "Seeing the body at this stage wouldn't tell me anything unless I knew him. If you're asking whether I could sense his Immortality, once he's lost his head, there's nothing left to sense." He gazed off toward the street and the steady thread of traffic that coiled along it. "But that's not what you wanted to talk about, was it?"

Some conversations were easier to have without direct eye contact, and since they'd left the confessional box, Henry had to find a different substitute. He pushed off from the tree and headed into the cemetery. Any paths between the stones had been lost decades before, leaving only the smooth sweep of newly mown grass.

"Richie...told me a little about the war of yours when we first met. We haven't talked about it since." He trailed his fingers along the top of one pitted stone. "I didn't anticipate being confronted with it so directly."

"Didn't anticipate," Liam asked, "or hoped you'd never have to be?"

Henry's shoe slipped on the grass as he jolted to a stop; he'd not expected to be seen through so easily.

"It's not an easy thing to know about," Liam agreed, before Henry could offer an explanation. "And we call it the Game."

"A game?" he echoed, hearing the word, but not understanding its application. "People killing people is not a game." In his immortality, Henry'd only gained an appreciation for how risky and fragile life was, for how important it was. And how brief. As resolutely as he'd searched for an end to his own longevity, the idea of taking it from someone who wasn't ready to go—that was still murder.

With a dip of his shoulder, Liam acknowledged Henry's objection. "I didn't say it was a good name; it's just what we call it. What we've always called it." He glanced at the sky, its pale blue streaked with clouds and jet trails. "I'd guess there are a few other details Richie failed to mention, as well." Growing more somber, he folded his hands in front of him and kept his gaze forward. "You think he's the one who did it, don't you?"

"I didn't say that." He'd answered too fast, Henry knew, and this time made it easy for the priest to see through him.

"You didn't have to. He's obviously not the one who died, or you would have started with that. In the six months I've known you, we've never talked about anything related to the nature of my Immortality; everything you know, you learned from him. One could assume that if you had other questions, you'd ask him. The only reason you'd come to me now is because you don't _want_ to ask him, presumably because you're afraid of the answers."

"Are you sure you haven't been a detective in your life?"

Liam let out a soft chuckle. "I've been a priest for over two hundred years. It's basically the same skill set, only with a lot more forgiveness." He paused at one of the tombstones and bowed his head in silent prayer. He'd been moving reverentially through the cemetery while they talked, touching a stone there, making a cross over a grave there, sometimes just stooping to read the name of the occupant.

"Did you know them?" Henry asked, turning out his hand to take in the whole cemetery. Such a question wasn't outside the realm of possibility, as most of the people here had Irish last names and birth dates that were contemporary with Liam's mortal life.

"Most of them, no," Liam answered. "My village was small and I didn't leave it much until after I died and joined the army. I think I might have known her." The woman had been buried in her grave with two of her children, all having died within a week of each other. He ran a finger over the inscription carved below the names. "I can remember someone singing the song that this line belongs to, and I feel like she was the one who came up with it." Straightening up, he brushed away the melancholy of old memories. "I'm trying to get to know everyone here. It seems like someone should take the time to remember them."

It was another contradiction among the many that Henry was coming to see in the way these other immortals dealt with the world. They were killers. By Liam's own admission, all of them were guilty of that crime. Yet he'd seen how deeply they cared: Richie trying to save people he had no attachment to, and one he wasn't supposed to know existed and was expressly supposed to ignore. Liam trying to honor the memories of people he'd never known.

That made it all the more difficult to ask the question that was really bothering him: "What if Richie was one who did it?"

Liam was matter-of-fact as he answered, "Then he was."

Henry rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and stopped to admire a statue of a child angel that sat on the top of a wide gray stone. Here he was, surrounded by commemorations to those who had died, many before their time, and all he wanted to do was find a way to reconcile himself to being complicit in that taking, if not by deed, then by silence. "Whatever happened to 'thou shalt not kill'?"

"It's funny you should ask that. As it happens, I've given that exact question a lot of thought, myself, and debated it with other priests who've had even longer to pray on it. Are you sure you want to hear my—our—answer?"

He could thank Liam for his time and leave now. Their friendship would continue, though it might be strained for awhile. He'd reconciled himself to the knowledge that his friends had killed before and were, in Richie's case, prepared to do so again primarily by not directly confronting the moral issues. But there was a headless body lying in his morgue and the very real possibility that a person he trusted had willingly put it there, and he had to at least try to understand how the Richie he'd come to know could also be that person. "I think I have to," he answered.

Liam nodded. "I think you're right." His gaze flicked around the cemetery, verifying their privacy. What he said next would not be found in any church's teaching. "The Game takes place outside of mortal awareness. Mostly." He acknowledged Henry with a slight nod, and though Henry wasn't mortal, they both recognized why he'd used the term. "By necessity, it also takes place outside of mortal laws. It's part of who we are. I have to believe that God's law doesn't apply here either, because only a cruel God would demand adherence to contradictory sets of rules."

 _The rules don't apply to us_ ; that's what Liam was saying. So many of the worst people Henry'd ever met had asserted, or acted in accordance to, the same thing.

Yet, some rules _didn't_ apply to them, such as the one that said that death was permanent.

"Some might say that only a cruel God would curse people with immortality," Henry countered.

Liam reached across the gap between them and laid his hand on Henry's arm. "I don't view my long life as a curse. It's not always easy, true. Nor is it without pain. But what life is, whether it lasts one day or one million days? Would you say differently?"

He knew what answer Liam wanted, but Henry couldn't give it.

A thin breeze swept through the cemetery, ruffling the grass and the leaves and tugging at their clothing. Liam brushed his hair out of his eyes and gave a small nod. "Ah, well, your immortality is different than mine. I know how I'm going to die. I don't know when, only that I know it will happen. You? I can see why your perspective would be different."

"And, yet, I'm not the one who has to kill to stay alive," Henry stated, pointing out the biggest difference between them. To the best of his knowledge, he was truly immortal. They were not. "Tell me, how often do these fights occur?"

Liam's lips quirked in amusement. "We're not vampires. We don't kill as a means of sustenance. Personally, I haven't taken a head since before I became a priest, and no one could accuse me of starving." He patted his stomach, one which was trim, but not emaciated.

Henry blanched at the casual language, but kept the judgment off his face.

"There are some of my kind who seek out fights, some who will kill any other Immortal they meet. The young ones often fall into that trap, though a few do eventually come to their senses—if they live long enough."

Abruptly, Henry thought of the simple, loaded answer Richie had given when Henry had confronted him about killing: "But only in self-defense?" Henry had asked. He'd been searching for any reason to justify the actions of the young man he'd welcomed into his home.

"No," Richie had answered, his gaze steady, his blue eyes sad.

And earlier that day, when he'd been sitting in the kitchen, reading the paper and eavesdropping on the phone conversation going on in the next room, he'd heard, "You know I'm not that guy anymore," without understanding then what Richie was rejecting.

Once again, Liam must have been following his thoughts because he continued, "From what I know of Richie, he'll only fight if he has to. If he took this guy's head, then it was because he had no choice." He stooped to pick up a crumpled soft drink can from the base of a stone, and Henry was once again struck by the fact that they were talking about ritual combat and homicide as casually as if they were discussing whose turn it was to clean up the other stray pieces of the garbage that had blown in from the street.

Henry threw up his hands at the implications of what he was being told. "You make this sound common. If that's the case, then why doesn't everyone know about it? Shouldn't the police and the FBI have records? Interpol? Scotland Yard?"

The emotion made no impression on Liam. He was matter-of-fact as he answered, "We make an effort to dispose of bodies. In those cases where we can't, Immortals who work for the police or the FBI have been known to cover up the evidence. It's in all of our best interest to keep the Game as quiet as possible."

They had made a full circuit of the cemetery, but Henry still hadn't asked his real question. He swallowed hard, his normal composure momentarily displaced. "Is that what I should do? Cover up the evidence?"

Once more, Liam touched Henry's arm. "That is between you and your conscience. First, I suggest that you find out if Richie was the winner, because, if he wasn't, then that means there's another Immortal in town. A fact for which I appreciate the warning, by the way."

Between him and his conscience? Henry'd been hoping for a more concrete answer than that. Still, Liam had given him more to think about, which might help his conscience make the right decision. "Thank you, Father."

"It's Liam. I think we're well past the need for titles." They shook hands and Liam carried the soft drink can to the garbage bin by the door. He threw it in, then turned back toward Henry who had followed him, though the conversation was over; only one door led out of the cemetery. "One last thing, the damage at the scene that you thought was lightning—it wasn't. That's what we call the Quickening, and it happens when an Immortal loses his head. For some of us, taking a Quickening—" Liam's eyes dropped closed and he shuddered in remembered pleasure— "is all the reason we need."

* * *

Notes:

In the story "Adam and Joe" by genteelrebel, she describes the need for Immortals to have cotton shoelaces, as nylon ones will melt under the force of the Quickening. This detail has been borrowed with her kind permission.

* * *

The original _Highlander_ movie, centered on Connor MacLeod, was released in 1986, and bombed in the US box office. It was, however, enormously successful in the European and Asian markets, which led to the making of _Highlander II: The Quickening_ (1991), which was so tremendously bad that it has been officially disowned, and _Highlander III: The Final Dimension_ (1994), which is mostly a tepid rehash of the first movie. As the _Highlander_ movie is canon in the _Forever_ universe, I've chosen to posit that the first movie also bombed in the European and Asian markets, thus preventing any of the sequels or spinoffs from coming into existence.

To make things even more fun, _Highlander: the Series_ (1992-7) is a canon AU from the first movie. Focused on the character Duncan MacLeod, it is based on the idea that everything in the first movie happened except the end of the Game. Connor appears in the first episode only, though he is mentioned a lot. _Highlander: the Raven_ (1998) is a spin-off of the series, and is focused on the character Amanda, who was introduced in the series.

There is _also_ a fourth movie, _Highlander: End Game_ (2000), starring both Connor and Duncan, which is a movie based on the series, and a fifth movie, _Highlander: the Source_ , also in the series universe, which is even worse than the second movie, and has been officially declared to be a nightmare that Duncan MacLeod had during the fourth movie. For the sake of my crossover universe, movies 2-5 did not occur. I've also chosen to ignore the events of the series episodes "Archangel" and "Avatar."

* * *

The character Methos is from the series, originally introduced in the third season episode "Methos." He is the oldest living Immortal, with a credited age of at least 5000 years. When we first meet him, he is using the name Adam Pierson.


	2. Chapter 2

Henry returned to the office just in time to have to turn around and go back out. A second body had turned up, spotted by a boater in the river.

Whomever had disposed of the body had made an effort to weight it by using bungee cords to strap barbells to the man's legs. It was the work of someone who had the right idea, but who hadn't thought through how bungee cords worked. One of the sets of hooks had come unsnapped, freeing the weight, and allowing the body to rise close enough to the surface to be seen.

A recovery team had pulled it ashore and now the body was laid out on the strip of grass that buffered the shoreline. A wide swath had been taped off to give the police room to work, yet a crowd of onlookers and rubberneckers had already gathered around the perimeter. The murmur of their discussion washed over the scene, nearly masking the sounds of traffic from the street above. Henry pushed through them, a sense of foreboding growing in him as he overheard the people's speculations.

Bodies being discovered in the East River was hardly an unusual occurrence. Not as usual as the Thames of Henry's youth, but still common enough that the spectators had already managed to apply their own expertise and develop their own theories. Mob activity was top of the list. Suicide. Lover's quarrel. All Henry knew was that his moral conundrum had just become more difficult, though he didn't yet know why. The victim's body was badly waterlogged and stinking from the river water, but even the most untrained eye was able to ascertain two facts: first, the man had been stabbed through the heart with something very sharp and pointy; and second, he still had his head.

Jo crouched on the opposite side of the body from Henry and ran her practiced eye over it. "Do you think it's related to the one from this morning?"

"I'm disinclined to think so," Henry responded. He was being optimistic and he knew it. Some might say he was being deliberately obtuse. Immortals killing each other was one thing. If Richie had started killing mortals—unarmed, defenseless mortals who had no hope of competing in a fair fight with an Immortal—that crossed a line that even Henry couldn't justify. Wars had civilian casualties, but this latest victim had clearly and deliberately been murdered. His explanation continued, more for his benefit than Jo's: "You see, the person who killed the man this morning had a specific interest in decapitation as a method of inflicting death. As this man was impaled rather than decapitated, it's reasonable to assume that—" He looked up suddenly, afraid that he might have said more than was safe.

Jo was watching him with narrowed eyes. "Is this the part where you tell me what you really know?"

"Consider our victim here," Henry said. If he talked about what was in front of them, maybe he could avoid talking about what was between them. "He was in his early forties, in good health, but not excessively so." He indicated the spreading paunch across the man's middle and the beginnings of the jowls on his cheeks. His preliminary search of the body turned up empty pockets, indication of a wedding ring and a watch that been removed, and indentations on the nose from glasses that were also gone. Those might have sunk or gotten lost in the attack that had killed him. "He suffered from poor eyesight, probably hyperopia, based on the angle he wore his glasses." Jo made a questioning noise and he flashed her an apologetic smile. "He used reading glasses habitually, which suggests that he spent a lot of time looking at a computer screen."

"So, not the kind of person who'd be getting into knife fights?" Jo suggested.

"Not unless he was keeping some unusual company. Damn." It was the last thing he found that drew the exclamation. He turned over the man's hand to check for defensive injuries and, there, on the inside of the wrist was a tattoo he'd never seen but had heard described. The victim _had_ been keeping unusual company, and it looked like that company had noticed he was there.

"What? What is it?" Jo leaned over to look at what had caused Henry's reaction and her eyes widened. "That's some serious ink. What do you think it means? It looks like something Greek. Maybe a fraternity symbol?"

Henry rocked back on his heels and glanced around to make sure they weren't at risk of being overheard. Hanson was still talking to the boater who had found the body and the rest of the police activity was divided between the water—both to make sure that the victim had been alone and to search for any of his missing belongings—and the onlookers, who kept trying to slip past the tape. "What do you know about secret societies?"

"You mean like the Illuminati or the Freemasons? Not much." At Henry's raised eyebrow, she explained, "If I knew much about them then they weren't very good at being secret, were they? Why?"

Another glance around, and Henry lowered his voice. "This is the mark of a secret society called The Watchers." A dead—no, a _murdered_ —Watcher was a whole other level of complication, because this man wouldn't have been a bystander who'd been in the wrong place; this was deliberate, perhaps premeditated.

"Why am I not surprised that you'd know something like that? And Watchers? What kind of name is that for a secret society?" Then, as the name sunk in, she tilted her head in contemplation. "What are they watching?"

She had a right to know. As the detective on the case, she couldn't do her job properly without all the information. As the medical examiner, and as her boyfriend, Henry wasn't fulfilling either of his roles properly by withholding information. But he didn't know how to tell her. Once upon a time, he'd advised Richie to tell Jo about himself, using only the minimal amount of information. They'd managed to avoid taking that step, and now Henry saw that fate may have been on their side. He knew that Jo wasn't going to be convinced with minimal information; she was going to need all of it. Then he was going to have to step back while she figured out how to live with what she'd learned.

"That—" Henry stopped as no easy starting place presented itself. Watchers. Immortals. The Game. Explaining one required explaining the other, digging himself in deeper and deeper into a mythology that he only partly understood himself. A mythology that he didn't know how to explain with the necessary sympathy. At once he saw a way in: an old phrase with new application. "That, is a long story." He pushed to his feet and brushed the wrinkles out of his trousers. "And now isn't the time to tell it." Glancing around, he began searching for the personnel who would bag the body and transport it to the morgue.

"Henry?" Jo's tone was sharp. "Long story?" She had already learned how that phrase didn't lead anyplace normal. She caught up to him, stopping him by the expedience of stepping right into his path and parking herself on the grass with a sure stance.

Knowing that she wasn't going to move until he told her something, and that trying to dodge around her would only get him body blocked by her faster reflexes, he drew as close as he dared to drop the words in her ear. "Immortals, Jo. This is about immortals."

Jo's mouth dropped open, then closed as her quick mind reached the most obvious conclusion. When he'd told her about himself, he'd explained how he'd spent most of his life believing that he was alone. "Adam?" she mouthed.

Adam, who was still lying in the hospital where Henry had put him, and hopefully never to leave. Henry'd told Jo about Adam, in part to impress on her the need to keep his secret, and because he wanted her to understand everything about what he was. The hospital had been notified to alert him in the event of the elder immortal "vanishing" from his room, so Henry would be the first to know—and Jo the second. She had to know that. He'd never let her find out like this.

Henry shook his head.

In the seconds that followed, as he saw Jo's expression flicker through the process of reorganizing her understanding of the world yet again, he walked away. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't what he wanted to do. But his own understanding of the world was undergoing its own upheaval and he needed to stabilize it before he could be a rock for Jo. Having just been confronted with the possibility that his friend was a real killer and not just a reluctant participant in a private war, he needed to know for sure. What he found out would determine everything about how he explained the other kind of Immortals to the detectives in his life.

* * *

As the afternoon progressed, Henry tried repeatedly to call Richie. Every time, the phone went to voicemail. Henry left several messages, then called Abe to have _him_ call and leave one of his own in case Henry wasn't doing it right. These modern cell phones were so easy to lose, break, or have stolen that their popularity was something of a mystery to Henry, yet people were so trusting of their ability to make connections. Sometimes he really missed the culture of paying personal visits to people. He gave it until the end of work the next day, then decided to do his part in bringing back that lost piece of culture.

Richie's new studio was only a few blocks from his last one. Henry walked in at the tail end of a class. A half-dozen girls and one boy, none more than six years old, and all wearing white uniforms that they had plenty of room to grow into, were jumping around a mat that had been littered with hula hoops. The person in charge of the class was not Richie. He was a taller man in his late twenties, early thirties, white, with brown hair, a strong nose, and sense of deep amusement at the task he'd inflicted on the kids.

Henry took a seat in the row of chairs along the side and waited for the class to finish, which it did in short order. The man clapped his hands and the kids all stumbled to a stop in the ring they currently occupied, then ran to line up for high-fives and a reminder that the next class was in two days. A few minutes of chaos followed as the kids found their parents, gathered their gear, and filed out of the building.

"Can I help you with something?" the man asked, noting that Henry had not collected a child. "If you wanna sign up—" He spoke with an accent that had a flat Midwestern affect that sounded too generic to be from anywhere.

Henry waved him off. "I was looking for Richie. I'm a friend of his."

"He's not here," the man answered, pointing out the obvious. He approached, holding out his hand. "I'm Matt Adamson. I'm covering his classes."

Henry introduced himself, and grasped the proffered hand. Much could be assessed from a person's handshake: the career area the person might be in (soft skin, worn skin, skin that was cracked or chapped through exposure to the elements), the person's character (weak grip, strong grip, overcompensating grip, something-to-prove grip), the person's temperament (distracted, enthusiastic, angry). What Henry felt from Matt startled him, had him pulling back, gaze rapidly soaking in every other bit of information he could find.

The man had been exercising, chasing the kids around the room, yet showed no signs of exertion. His gaze was distant—polite, but leaning toward bored. His stance was strong, firmly planted, yet ready to move, as could be expected from a trained martial artist. Physical strength showed in the breadth of his shoulders and the curves of his pectoral muscles as glimpsed through the opening where the lapels of the _gi_ didn't meet.

None of that would have meant anything without what Henry felt in the handshake: the musculature, calluses, and force of grip of a swordsman.

"You're an Immortal," he said. It was hard to keep his voice from rising in excitement. Richie had said there were a lot of other Immortals out there, yet somehow Henry had not expected to simply meet another one like this.

He'd wondered about how he used the word as an adjective while this other group used it as a noun. What difference did that make in their self perceptions? In their ways of interacting with the world? Was the part of speech significant because Henry had thought himself alone and unique for so long and these others knew they weren't? Now, when confronted with more evidence of how relatively common Immortals were, he wanted only to compare notes, share experiences, trade the lessons learned about how to survive in a world that was changing faster every day.

Matt's frowned "What'd'ya mean?" was a splash of water on Henry's curiosity-fed enthusiasm. This Immortal was not interested in bringing Henry into his confidence, though he was also unsuccessful at dispelling Henry's identification of his nature. He'd given a good impression of not understanding, but a flicker of guardedness in his eyes gave him away.

Henry offered a friendly smile and tried to make himself look unthreatening. "Richie told me about himself," he explained. "I'm a Medical Examiner, you see, and he had an...incident...that brought him to my morgue. Did he mention it? It's a—well, I suppose that any story that involves landing in the morgue shouldn't be classified as _funny_ , although it was not without its moments of absurdity…" He trailed off at the realization that Matt wasn't being put at ease.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Matt shook his head like he knew he wasn't hearing Henry correctly. "I was just doing a favor for a friend of mine."

"And mine, as well," Henry replied. Because of Matt's show of confusion—and it was a show, even though it was good enough to fool anyone with lesser observational skills than his—Henry decided not to press the point. He could be wrong. He wasn't, but he could be. Furthermore, he was here for a bigger purpose than to argue with a person he'd just met about whether he could or could not die. "Do you know where Richie is or when he'll be back? I really need to speak with him."

"Yeah, I can't help you," Matt responded in a tone that had lost all its earlier solicitude. He turned away and began picking up the scattered hula hoops, yet Henry got the impression that Matt was still tracking every movement.

"Please. It's important. Is he on vacation? Can you at least tell me if he's going to be able to answer his messages?

"Look," Matt answered. "Assuming I did know, I still wouldn't tell you." One by one he flung the gathered hula hoops at a wide hook on the wall. Each one landed with precision, the little bead inside rattling from the impact. "One: I don't know you, and—" A hoop hit the others hard, making them all shake—"Two: I don't know you." Finishing, he crossed his arms and settled into a defiant stance, one that Henry'd seen modern teenagers use so often when arguing with their parents. How old was this guy, anyway? Was it possible that he was only a few years older than his looks suggested?

Henry rubbed his forehead, feeling the beginning of a headache coming on. He'd pushed too hard and alienated the one person who could tell him what he needed to know. He could talk to Liam, again, but Liam probably didn't know about Watchers—Richie had said that Immortals weren't supposed to know and that his own awareness was an accident. This new Immortal was probably similarly in the dark. "I'm sorry," he said. "I apologize for imposing on your time." He hoped that the politeness might engender some thawing of the ice. "If you do hear from him, please tell him I called and I'd appreciate his prompt response."

The non-committal noise he got in response told Henry that the message might or might not get passed on.

Only as he was climbing into his cab did Henry recall Liam's comment about a new Immortal in town. While he hardly believed that he was aware of how many other Immortals might live in New York City, the one he'd just met was clearly a new one. He'd taken over Richie's classes, but was that because he was a friend or because he had reason to take over Richie's life—perhaps by taking Richie's life? Too late, it occurred to him that this new Immortal could be the killer the police were searching for.


	3. Chapter 3

Come morning, Henry couldn't put off the examination of the dead Immortal. If he didn't do it, then someone else in the department would, and whatever they learned would become even more difficult to contain.

The initial steps went quickly because there was little to find: no scars, no cavities or dental work, no deformities, no broken bones. Even the electrical discharge had left no damage save for the cauterization at the neck. The only injuries were the ones gained during the final sword fight that hadn't had time to heal. While true that the man hadn't been very old when he'd died the first time, it was still unusual to find no damage at all. Unless his fingerprints were in the system, identifying him would be impossible.

As he became more immersed, his examination slowed. Having access to a formerly Immortal body to study was fascinating. Henry removed each organ with care akin to reverence at getting to see a heart, liver, stomach that were effectively the Platonic ideal of those organs. Each showed no wear, no signs of damage or disease. The heart was the healthiest he'd ever seen. Was this all the function of what had allowed this body to be immortal or had the owner been this healthy before, he wondered. His own body bore the scar of the gunshot that had killed him, but no injuries he'd sustained afterward left their marks. Presumably, his heart had healed the damage that had stopped it, though he really had no way to check.

"Really makes you see the inherent irony of the universe," Lucas commented, breaking into his thoughts.

"Hm?"

"Well, here's this guy who was doing everything right—worked out, ate healthy, the whole shebang—and he still managed to die before he turned twenty."

"I doubt he wasn't yet twenty," Henry replied. There was no telling how old the man had been; it could easily have been scores or even hundreds of years.

"Fine, twenty-five, then. Either way, he didn't come anywhere close to average life expectancy. Makes me feel less guilty about grabbing lunch at McDonald's and skipping my visit to the gym." Lucas parked a hand on his hip and studied the corpse with its decapitated head for a moment, then intoned, "In the end, there can be only one."

Henry had only idly been paying attention to the conversation; at the last, his attention snapped to Lucas. "What did you say?"

Lucas threw up his hands defensively, as if expecting Henry to reprimand him for making a light joke of a serious, and very real, homicide. "It's a quote from that movie I mentioned that one time. _Highlander_? Remember? The characters have to behead each other until there's only one left. Great movie." He shook his head sadly. "Shame that it tanked at the box office. The sequels would have been _awesome_."

For once, Henry found himself without a response. Lucas routinely made pop culture references, and Henry routinely disregarded them. Pop culture was too ephemeral to expend his attention on when so many other topics had professional or personal relevance that wouldn't become obsolete in six months. Now he saw that this judgment may have been too hasty.

"Lucas—" he started. He had to steel himself to ask about the movie. It could be a coincidence, yet that phrase...none of the Immortals he knew had said it to him, but none of them had provided any reason for why they were at war except for Liam's comment about the Quickening. Some of them, Liam'd said. For "some of them" that was enough. What about the rest of them? A fight for supremacy could easily be that reason. But a movie on the topic, one that everyone and anyone could have seen that openly revealed details the Immortals hoarded so closely, was almost too good to be true.

"Anywaaaaay," Lucas backpedaled. "Jo called. She's on her way over to pick you up. Do you two have a hot date?"

The abrupt topic shift drew out a questioning, "Lucas?"

"I didn't know you had it in you to blow off work early. Where are you going?"

This was more familiar territory. "Did she say why she's coming here?"

Lucas frowned, remembering. "Come to think of it, she said she needed your assistance at the station. Huh. I guess that doesn't sound like a hot date at all."

"I can assure you that whatever her reasons are, they're purely professional," Henry said. "I'd better finish here so I can get cleaned up. It won't do to go to the station looking like this." He gestured at the blood-spattered smock he wore. No matter how careful he was, mess was inevitable.

"Right, right. You want me to close—"

"No, I'll take care of this," Henry answered. Despite his occasional inappropriate enthusiasm, Lucas was good at his job; if he took too close a look at what was going on with the body, he just might draw the right conclusions, and Henry didn't think he could deal with that. To distract his assistant, he threw out a different bone: "Do you think you could get me a copy of that movie? It sounds...interesting."

"What? Yeah," Lucas answered. Then, as he understood what Henry had actually asked, he perked up even more. "Yeah! I'll bring it tomorrow. You want to watch it together? I've got this great system at my place—"

Lucas really needed to find some friends his own age. With some regret, Henry thought that it was too bad he couldn't introduce him to Richie.

"Lucas," Henry said, a third time, a third different meaning.

This one Lucas understood. "Raincheck, huh? OK, I can take a hint. I'll just go tell Jo that you'll be with her soon."

* * *

Jo was in a dark mood and having to wait longer than she'd expected for Henry to finish the autopsy and get cleaned up had done nothing to lighten it. By the time he was ready for her, she had found and shredded a paper napkin and was working on pacing a groove in the hallway floor.

"Learn anything new?" she asked, by way of greeting. She'd been observing him through the examination room windows while she paced.

Henry shook his head. "Nothing that we didn't already know." At least, in regards to the case. The pristine condition of the organs had raised all kinds of questions about how this kind of Immortality worked that Henry was eager to study, if he could find a way to do so without resorting to the kind of butchery that anatomists had long been guilty of. He was no Burke or Hare. "You'll be interested to know that the electrical discharge didn't affect our man at all, aside from the burns to his neck. There were no surface burns, nor any interior burns."

"Yeah, I had a feeling you were going to tell me something like that. Nothing's ever simple around you, is it, Henry?" Her tone was resigned, yet a bitterness underneath it told him that how he'd acted the previous day had hurt her.

"Jo," he started, reaching for the apology that she deserved.

With a sharp gesture, she cut him off.

Thanks to her restraint, their interaction elicited only a few curious glances from his colleagues. Henry nodded at a few of his co-workers as he passed, Jo's heels clicking off the steps to the car like a countdown.

They'd buckled in and Jo had pulled the car neatly into the midday traffic before she said, "I thought you were going to call me? Or come over? You left me with a pretty big cliffhanger."

"I'm sorry," Henry managed. The radio was on, so he reached over and turned it off. The car settled into a silence that felt an awful lot like an impasse in an argument. Henry had run out of excuses, out of reasons to delay. He still didn't know Richie's role in the murders, but he had to believe that anyone who would risk himself to save his Watcher wouldn't then turn around and murder someone else's. He was going to believe that, he decided, until and unless he absolutely couldn't.

"So? Where were you? I thought we were past the point where you shut me out."

Admittedly, he'd been avoiding her. He'd also been was with Abe, practicing how to tell Jo what was going on. The more he tried to explain it, the more he understood why Richie had never told a mortal until Abe: the whole thing was insane. That it wasn't Henry's secret to tell only made it harder because he knew he couldn't answer all the questions that would arise. He'd thought about taking Jo to meet Father Liam, then couldn't determine any reason that she would believe him, either. Henry's discovery of the other kind of Immortal had started with seeing Richie revive from the dead; Jo had no such basis for hanging the rest of the story on.

Henry re-settled the seat belt strap across his chest so it wouldn't wrinkle his shirt. Seat belts were purposeless for him, yet still mandatory, so he followed the law. This seemed to be the only law he was following these days. "I was unavoidably occupied," he answered. He wanted to take her hand, but her fingers were clenched around the steering wheel and her gaze fixed on the cars ahead. She was keeping herself intentionally disconnected from him, and he couldn't stand it because she was right: he'd shared too much with her to start holding back now. That finalized his decision. "Understand that what I'm about to tell you needs to be kept in the same confidentiality that you keep my secret."

"I can't promise that," she said. As if understanding that he wouldn't proceed with only that, she hurried to add, "But I can try."

It would have to be enough.

Henry watched a bicyclist weave dangerously through traffic while he schooled his thoughts. So many people behaved as if they were impervious to death, and here Jo was investigating the homicide of someone who had been—up until he wasn't. He waited until they stopped at a traffic light to say, "There are other people who, like me, don't age and who are immune to most forms of death. Unlike me, decapitation will kill them, as it killed the first victim we saw yesterday." He waited until Jo gave him a nod to keep going before he ventured into the part she wasn't going to like and the part neither he nor Abe had figured out a good way to say. Because circumspect wouldn't work, he went straight for blunt. "They engage in a form of ritual combat in which the winner kills the loser."

The car turned into the sun and Jo flipped the visor down against the sudden glare. "With swords?"

"Yes."

Her lips pursed as she worked through to her next question. "The Watchers? They're...what? Some kind of record keepers? Bookmakers? They take odds on the winners and losers in these fights for some kind of underground high-risk gambling club?"

Henry cocked his head, impressed with how calmly she was taking this information, and yet surprised with the inferences she was drawing from it. It had never occurred to him that the Immortals could be taking bets, or that the Watchers might be treating them like dogs in a fight. "Nothing of the sort. It's my understanding that they're more like...biographers." Observe and record, Richie had said. Observe and record, but never interfere.

They pulled into the station and slotted into Jo's parking space. She cut the engine, but stayed with her hands locked on the wheel, a finger tapping against the vinyl. At last she said, "OK."

"OK?" Henry echoed. That was it? Abe had had more questions, and he already knew (most of) the truth. There was no way her acceptance was that easy. "You believe me?"

"It doesn't matter what I believe," she answered. "It only matters that they believe it." For the first time, she turned her gaze on him. In her brown eyes, he caught a spark of anger. She thought he was jerking her around, as if her willingness to believe his secret meant he had to test the limits of her gullibility. "I would have expected you to be more skeptical, though."

They had been having an argument, after all. Without his awareness, their relationship had moved over the last few months to a place where they could have whole discussions without saying a word, and they'd managed to reach the conclusion to this set of revelations without needing to bother with the revelations. A part of him wished that he'd kept quiet while the rest of him desperately wanted to convince her. The problem is, he still didn't know how. "I'm the last person to be casting stones," he pointed out, as he exited the car. Seeking a change of subject, he asked, "Why did you need me to come down here?"

Slamming the car door, Jo motioned for him to follow her inside. "Funny thing. There was a robbery last night. Liquor store hold-up. Nothing we haven't seen a hundred times before. No one was killed. It's not my case and I never would have known about it except for one thing: one of the customers in the store was caught carrying an illegal weapon. One guess as to what it was."

"A sword?" Henry ventured. Everything kept coming back to those swords.

She gave a grim nod. "Very good! The 'customer' is in an interrogation room right now. Has been for a couple hours. But, he refuses to talk. When he was brought in, he declared that he was exercising his right to remain silent, and he's been good on that promise until about half an hour ago when he declared that he would talk, but only to one person. Do you want to guess again?"

Henry pulled open the door to the station and held it while Jo entered. The bustle of the station never failed to surprise him. So many people hurried from one place to another, so many more stood in lines and waited for their turn to be noticed, and a very few others waited along the edges trying not to be, that the first impression was always chaos. People shouted, phones rang, shoes stomped across the floor, and somehow everyone was still able to hear only what they needed to.

"That won't be necessary," he said to Jo, knowing that she would hear his reticence at being publicly connected to this case in any capacity other than as medical examiner. The captain would know and Hanson, Jo's partner, would know. Beyond that, he wanted to keep undue attention off himself, because attention led to questions.

Jo nodded, understanding, and led him to the observation room. Only after they were secured inside did she ask, "Any idea who he is or why he wants to talk to you?"

At a glance, Henry had the answer to both questions. "Yes."

Matt Adamson sat in the interrogation room, elbows on the wooden table and chin resting on the back of his hands. Hanson sat across from him, trying to break him with his stare. Matt wasn't cuffed or otherwise constrained and the only vibe he gave off was one of extreme boredom. He had on the jeans and the thick sweater he must have been wearing the previous night when he stepped out to buy a drink. His coat was missing, as was the sword that would have been in it and that had brought him here.

"Well?" Jo asked, eyebrows going up in question.

Henry shared the man's name. "I met him yesterday. Our conversation was fraught, so I assume he's only using my name now because he remembers it."

"Is he part of that...?" Jo trailed off, leaving the word hanging. If she'd kept going, Henry thought she'd have ended up with 'club.'

"Yes," Henry said again. It was too late to pretend otherwise. Matt wanted to talk to him. Rather, Matt was _willing_ to talk to him, though Henry doubted that the man would say anything useful. What the Immortal likely wanted to do was leave; he'd been awake all night, unless he'd managed to catch some sleep in the cell where the police would have put him to try to soften him up, and talking to Henry could be his concession toward that goal. Before Henry agreed to go hear Matt's protestations of innocence, he needed to know more. "Where's his sword? Can you bring it to me?"

"You can't give it back to him," Jo said, as if Henry would consider that. Had he really lost her trust that completely?

Drawing close, Henry gathered her hands in his. They were cold and filled with the tension of someone trying not to let them curl into fists. He automatically started rubbing his thumbs in circles to bring some heat and relief to her hands. "Jo, I am not lying to you. I have never wanted to lie to you, which is why I told you about myself and why I'm telling you the truth about this current homicide case. I believe that if I see the sword, I can determine whether he's a legitimate suspect."

"Forensics will tell us that," Jo argued.

She was right. They'd test the sword for the blood of the victims. It wouldn't matter if Matt had cleaned the weapon recently; traces of blood would still be on it. As would traces from any other fights he'd been involved in. That wasn't what Henry was looking for, unless one of those traces turned out to match Richie. "Can they tell us today?"

Jo searched his face, hopefully seeing in it his sincerity. "I'll get it."

She'd no sooner stepped out than Hanson entered. His white button-down shirt was wrinkled and his tie loosened to the point of being on the verge of falling off. "Good, you're here," he said on seeing Henry. "I don't know why this idiot wants to talk to you. If you can crack him, I'll owe you one."

"Careful," Henry warned as he shrugged out of his own coat, folded it, and set it on the table. "I might collect on that someday." His attempt to keep his tone light didn't fool either of them.

Taking the moments provided in adding his gloves, scarf, and hat to the pile, he prepared himself to go have his second conversation with the Immortal, well aware that this time Henry was in the one in control.


	4. Chapter 4

Matt glanced up when Henry entered the room. His expression softened, then immediately hardened again when he spotted Hanson closing the door behind them. "Just him," Matt said, nodding at Henry. "Alone." His eyes were ringed from lack of sleep, a condition that appeared to be endemic at the station, and a day's growth of whiskers roughened his cheeks and chin. To his right sat a bottle of water. Its cap was off, but the bottle looked otherwise untouched.

"Can't do that," Hanson replied. He sounded brusque, his patience strained from having to deal with the uncooperative man in front of him.

Dropping his chin back onto his folded hands, Matt said, "Then I have nothing to say." He went back to staring at the empty air.

They weren't going to get anywhere at this rate. His long life had taught Henry a great deal of patience, but he still didn't appreciate having his time wasted. "Give us a few minutes," he suggested to Hanson, a touch on the shoulder showing that he was OK with being left. "You can always come back in if you think anything untoward is happening."

Hanson wanted to argue. He also wanted to solve the case and get it off his desk. The conflict played on his stressed face, then he turned and walked out. The door slammed shut.

Henry slipped into the seat on the opposite side of the table, his back to the one-way mirror. "You're making this much more difficult on yourself than necessary."

Matt pulled his gaze from wherever it had been and let it settle on Henry. "They don't have anything concrete on me," he said, "and they couldn't do anything to me even if they did." He seemed so sure about that that for just an instant Henry wondered if Matt had somehow not _known_ he was armed. Henry also noted that his accent had changed. His ears hadn't noted the difference immediately because the new one was very similiar to Henry's.

"They caught you carrying a concealed sword in public," Henry pointed out with just enough brow-raise to make it clear that he knew what that meant. "In the state of New York, that's assumed to be an intent to use."

"And, yet, I wasn't the person holding up a liquor store. I was one of the people being held up." Matt folded his arms behind his head and leaned back in the wooden seat in a way that left his chest and stomach exposed. If he'd been an animal, the position would have been a sign of trust. Who knew what it meant in an Immortal. The word that sprang to Henry's mind was arrogance. This was a man who'd had some practice using people's perceptions of him. Too bad he didn't know that Henry had had some practice seeing through that ruse.

Folding his hands on the table in front of him, Henry asked, "Did you know the police are investigating a pair of murders that involved a sword?"

Matt didn't so much as flinch or blink; the question was one he'd heard before, perhaps many times. So, he wasn't a new Immortal. But he couldn't be very old, either, Henry thought, not if he couldn't appreciate the danger of police scrutiny. Richie had certainly been more cautious. "I had nothing to do with that, either." Once again, there was no wavering of confidence.

Henry let the words hang for a moment in case more were forthcoming. None were, so he decided to do what he thought Jo would do if she were the one in here with the full knowledge that he had. "Then we had better start by establishing an alibi. Where were you the morning of the 17th?"

"I was sleeping," Matt answered without missing a beat. It was too fast, too practiced.

"You didn't ask about the time."

"No reason to. My flight got in at 9 pm the night before. I was in bed by 10:30. And I didn't wake up until nearly 1 pm the next day."

"Your flight…" Henry probed.

"From Heathrow," Matt answered, which explained the change of accent. It was part of a cover. He could also try to plead ignorance of the law, though Henry doubted that even the most obtuse New York City judge would believe that Englishmen still carried swords.

Deciding not to pursue that line—he wasn't a detective and he was sure that the police would have already verified the flight manifests—he asked instead: "You slept for over 14 hours?" He'd only known adults to sleep that long when they were ill or seriously injured. On his best night, Henry managed only six or seven hours of sleep.

Matt shrugged. "Jet lag. It's tough on these old bones."

Henry regarded the man sitting across from him. Matt's body appeared no older than Henry's, and might have been five or ten years younger, though even many mortals went through a nebulous period between their late 20s and early 50s when exact age could be difficult to determine; how long the body had been that age wasn't relevant, nor was it a discussion Hanson needed to overhear. "Do you have anyone who can corroborate that?"

"No."

Which meant it was useless as an alibi. Matt had to know that, but like everything else said so far, he didn't seem to care.

The room was constructed to keep out noise from the corridor or observation room. With the most obvious question out of the way, they dropped into a silence broken only by the buzzing of the overhead lights. Matt's chest rose and fell in even breaths, a study in nonchalance, and he rolled his neck slowly, either to work out muscles sore from inactivity or to admire the industrial yellow on the cinderblock walls. Henry let him, half expecting Hanson to come storming back in because no confession had spilled, and hoping he wouldn't because he knew that, appearances to the contrary, Matt was sizing him up in return.

They both knew that Hanson was in the observation room. Jo probably was, too. Nothing said in was in confidence, which meant that he and Matt had to speak in what was effectively a code—made all the more difficult because Henry didn't know how much Matt knew, and Matt didn't know how much Henry knew.

Or they could skip the code and worry about what the police heard later, as Matt decided to do when he spoke up: "Who was beheaded?"

"How do you know anyone was?" Henry countered, not yet ready to be so blunt. He'd said that swords had been involved. He'd deliberately not stated how the victims had died. Matt was the primary suspect; While it was unlikely that an Immortal in police custody would actually confess to killing people, Henry's instincts told him that this man wasn't their culprit, but that made the question all the more suspicious, especially to the ears in the observation room.

The "How do you think I know?" look Matt shot him was so sharp that it could have been used as the murder weapon. As an Immortal, he'd be familiar with the Game. He looked no more like a serial killer than Richie did, than Father Liam did. Yet Henry knew they all were, because they all had to be. "All right. Let's say I read about it in the paper." Never mind that he couldn't have. "Or, no, maybe I heard about it from someone who was at the crime scene." That was remotely possible. No matter how careful the police were to seal a scene, gory details had a way of getting out. "I dont remember. The real question is: why do you think I did it?"

"I think we established that the last time we spoke."

"Right. And because I fit your profile—" He gave a slow incline of his head, the only admission of his Immortality that Henry could get under the circumstances— "you think I'm the one who beheaded these people?"

The slip caught Henry off-guard. He shut his mouth quickly while he weighed what he'd learned. Matt was assuming that both victims were Immortals, which was the first actual clue that he hadn't done it. With deliberate care, Henry unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves and rolled them back so that Matt could see his wrists—and Matt's eyes did flick down. Assuming he knew about Watchers, he now knew that Henry wasn't one.

"I don't," Henry replied. Not anymore. "The police do. They're the ones who think there's a connection between your sword and their open cases. In regards to who was killed: We don't have an ID on...the beheading. The second one a bystander, probably someone who Watched the fight." Matt's mouth tightened at the verb, and Henry understood that his clue had been picked up. Apparently the Watchers were far more commonly known than they were supposed to be. "His name has been released, so there's no harm in my sharing it. Jacob McPhee."

That got a reaction. Matt's chair dropped forward, the front legs hitting the vinyl floor with a thud. He blinked hard and repeated the name as if testing it against his memory.

"You know him?"

"I knew him," he answered, voice soft. He held his palm out at a level not much higher than the table. "When he was knee-high to a grasshopper, as they used to say. When did he get to be old enough—" He shook his head, dislodging the thought. "I suppose it doesn't matter now. How did he die?"

Again, Henry hesitated. "He was stabbed through the heart. My guess is that someone didn't like being Watched."

Another reaction, this one even more genuine. Matt's eyes narrowed and his arms crossed, the open posture gone. Henry had struck a nerve.

"Then trust me when I say that I'd never do anything like that. There are lines that—"

A tapping on the window interrupted them.

"You'd better go see what they want," Matt said when Henry didn't move. "See if I said the right thing."

"Or the wrong one," Henry added. He stood up, pulling his sleeves back into position and buttoning the cuffs, using the movement to disguise the retrieval of one of Abe's business cards from his pocket. He slid it across the table and Matt palmed it with practiced precision. Only someone watching for the exchange of the card might, _might_ have seen the transfer. "This has been enlightening," he said, standing up. "Thank you for agreeing to talk to someone."

Matt inclined his head once in a slow nod, then, as if the whole conversation had never occured, rearranged himself back into the position that had so frustrated Hanson.

* * *

As he'd thought, Jo and Hanson were both in the observation room. Hanson also had his arms crossed, a sour expression on his face. Jo looked like she was trying not to look angry; her mouth was pressed into a hard line, but creases at the corners gave away the smile she was holding back. He wondered how she had understood the conversation she'd heard. Wordlessly, she held the sword out.

"Can you believe he had _that_ concealed in his coat?" Hanson asked. "I don't know why it took a pat down to find it, much less how he could move." Clasping his hands behind his back, he observed Matt studying the ceiling in the interrogation room. "He _also_ had two nine mils—which he had permits for—and a knife in his boot. Guy was armed to the teeth. You can't tell me he's innocent."

One look at the sword told Henry everything he needed to know. It was an antique broadsword with a solid hilt and thick quillons. The heft of the metal meant that its wielder would have to be very strong, a feature belied by Matt's long, thin frame and hidden beneath his bulky sweater. He'd also have to have excellent endurance and confidence in fighting one-handed, and that made Henry marvel at the fact that an expert martial artist, expert sword master, immortal, and trained killer had let himself get held up in a common robbery; he had no doubts that Matt could have stopped the robbery long before the police arrived, if he'd wanted to. Someone that able wouldn't let himself get caught on murder charges if he was guilty of them.

"I can. With reasonable certainty," Henry countered. "He didn't do it. You can let him go."

"Don't you need to examine the sword," Jo asked, at the same time as Hanson asked, "How do you figure that?"

Henry smiled. "The sword used in the attacks had a curved blade."

"You're making that up," Hanson accused. "That wasn't in the report." At Jo's wince, he corrected himself. "OK, that was in the report." Not to be thrown off by his failure to recall every detail, he rushed on with, "What were you talking about in there? It sounded like you two know something the rest of us don't. What are you, like, old friends?"

Henry could only shrug. "I only just met him, although I believe we have some friends in common."

"You're sure he didn't do it?" Jo asked. The sword was too big for her, and she was holding it away from her body in distaste, yet the image threw Henry back to a younger time, an old memory of a woman he'd known, the sister of one of his school mates whose family had indulged her desire to learn to fight. Her name was lost to him now. The heat of the scandalousness would never be. As different as the modern world was from the one he'd grown up in, seeing Jo like this appealed to him way more than it should.

"I'm certain that if you have forensics test this sword, you will not find any blood from either of the victims. Now, if you don't mind, I really need to be returning to my office. Jo, would you be so kind as to drive me?" He stepped out into the hall and took up position against the wall, calming himself, while he waited for the two detectives to negotiate what to do with both the sword and the detainee.

At last, Jo emerged. She nodded once to him, then proceeded down the hallway with quick, hard steps. Henry let her lead until they got to the outside door. His upbringing had included the etiquette of holding doors for women and he'd never put much effort into breaking the habit.

"OK, no one's listening," she said, as soon as they were outside. "So tell me how you really know that he's not our guy."

"The size and shape of the sword are significant evidence," Henry answered.

"And if he can use one, he can probably use others. Maybe he got rid of the first one and switched to carrying this other one." This was what made Jo such a good detective, her ability to think through all the possibilities and to let the evidence lead her to the right conclusion. That's what detectives were supposed to do, of course, but Henry had known many who arrived at their conclusion and then only saw that evidence that fit it. As long as they were getting criminals off the streets, too many people were willing to allow that kind of shoddy work.

"It was his reaction to the second death," Henry confessed. "He said he knew the guy, then swore that he hadn't killed him."

"That's it? You're taking him at his _word_?"

"Their Game has rules, and the person you're looking for isn't following them." Henry thought again about how Richie had risked himself to save his Watcher, and then Matt's look of horror at the discovery that a different Watcher had been murdered. With most people, one could tell a lot about their character based on how they treated animals, children, and their social inferiors. With Immortals, he was beginning to suspect, one could tell even more by how they treated their Watchers.

The chess table was set up and the tea was ready when Matt walked into the antique shop that night. Admittedly, the table was always ready unless Henry and Abe had a game in progress—which they didn't today—the tea was growing cold, and the store had technically been closed for over an hour, but patience remained a virtue.

Matt had changed his clothes since the police station, though only in that the new ones were now a brown sweater and darker jeans. He also had the collar of his long coat turned up high. As there was no wind or rain outside, Henry assumed that the collar was the man's attempt to disguise his identity, though nothing short of a full head mask would be able to disguise his profile. He pulled off the coat as he entered and hung it on the coat rack by the door below Henry's hat. The heft of the sword pulled the folds taut, and Henry felt a twinge of sympathy in his shoulders at the thought of having to carry all that extra weight all the time. What a burden to always have to live prepared to defend against others who were actively trying to kill you.

Slipping into the seat across from him, Matt laid out a single word with the all the power of a seasoned interrogator behind it: "Talk." The heat was on in the store, yet the room suddenly felt frigid.

Henry poured himself a cup of tea, grateful for the small amount of warmth left in it, hesitated, then poured one for Matt, too. The whole service was on a rolling tea cart that he'd pressed into use from the store's inventory, while the dishes came from his personal stock. He drew on the comfort of the ritual and the familiar items to give him strength against this man whom he had now had two conversations with but had clearly never truly met. "As I mentioned, I had cause to become acquainted with one Mr. Richard Ryan..." He went on to give an outline of how they'd met and what Richie had told him about Immortals.

"So he told you everything," Matt summarized. He picked up one of the knights and began turning it over in his hand as if he'd never seen anything like it before. His tea remained untouched.

"No, he didn't," Henry answered. "I assumed he had, or at least had told me as much as he, himself, knew. However, new information keeps coming to light. For instance, I only just learned about Quickenings. I can't imagine that Richie didn't know about those."

Matt made a face that might have been a smile on anyone else. "You'd be correct."

Deciding to test his luck, Henry schooled himself, his tea cup safely ensconced in his grip, and said, "And 'there can be only one'?"

The knight fell to the table and rolled, knocking over two pawns. "He told you that?"

Henry raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out why that phrase was so shocking. It was practically common knowledge, after all. "No," he answered. "I got that from a movie." That he had yet to see the movie also didn't matter.

With a snort, Matt righted the pieces and shifted his attention to the Queen. "I'd forgotten about that movie. Little bit of propaganda we tried..." His brow wrinkled as he thought back. "...was it thirty years ago, already? No wonder it doesn't work anymore. Might be time to put together a reboot. That is what they're calling it, right?"

"You made a movie about yourselves _on purpose_?" Henry asked.

"What better way to hide than to give people a reason to think you aren't real?" Matt explained. "I've often found that to be a good practice."

Henry could see the worth of that; look at how Lucas had treated the beheaded body as a joke. Had the movie become popular, even Jo might have insisted harder on treating the whole case as that of obsessed fans taking their obsession too far.

"How do you know about the Watchers?" Matt asked.

"I should be asking _you_ that question," Henry replied. "It's my understanding that Immortals aren't supposed to know about them."

"Apparently, some secrets aren't as well kept as they should be."

It was a dig at Henry and a dig at Richie. It might have been at dig at himself; Henry couldn't read that deeply between the lines. That was so rare that Henry didn't know what to do except finish off his first cup of tea and pour himself another cup. The bitterness of over-steeped leaves puckered his mouth. "Do you know who the police are looking for?"

For the first time, Matt appeared to see the tea cup sitting at his left elbow. "Any chance for something stronger?"

"What? Oh, yes, of course," Henry answered. His oversight of etiquette appalled him. Just because he didn't indulge habitually didn't mean everyone else abstained. "Do you have a preference?"

"Scotch, if you have it. Neat." Matt considered the tepid tea as if it could turn into something harder through force of will. "Anything else with alcohol is fine, otherwise. Neat. And make it a double. I never did get my drink last night."

Abe didn't keep alcohol in the shop. Henry would have to go upstairs to get it. He debated for a second the wisdom of leaving Matt alone in the antique store. The urge to get on Matt's good side so that he could get the answers he wanted decided for him. "I'll only be a moment."

He moved as quickly as he could without looking like he was running. When he returned, Matt hadn't changed position, though the chess board had. Where the white pieces had been facing Matt before, they now faced Henry's seat.

"Do you play?" Henry asked, it belatedly having occurred to him that he'd also assumed Matt would be interested in a match. He was making a lot of assumptions, which wasn't like him. He was going to have to be more careful.

Matt accepted the offered Scotch with something akin to relief. "It's been a few years, but I think I can remember how." As he sipped, his eyes drifted closed and Henry saw him visibly lose some of his defensiveness. "Much better. And, yes, I have a pretty good idea who the police want."

Henry swallowed hard, suddenly afraid of asking his next question. "Is it Richie?" He wasn't a superstitious man—he'd go so far as to say he abhorred superstition—yet he still felt his fingers crossing beneath the table, where no one but he could see them.

Matt swallowed back another gulp, his face giving no hint of the answer he'd be giving. Finally, he shook his head. "No, it's not."

Henry's relief was so strong that his breath whooshed out of him. Perhaps he should have brought himself a Scotch, too. A celebration drink would not be amiss right now. There was only one thing still bothering him: "Where is he, then?"

"I don't know. I told you that. For all I know, Richie's looking for the same guy you're looking for." The way Matt's eyes crinkled, fine lines deepening in a way that added years to a face that couldn't hold on them, gave away how displeased he was with the notion.

"Does he know that a Watcher was murdered?" Henry asked. Richie had already proven that he was willing to go to extremes for his Watcher, a person he professed to not even know. Did his sympathy extend to everyone in the organization?

Matt shrugged. "I'm not a mind reader, and I still haven't talked to him since he left." He set the Queen down and sprawled back in the chair. "That bothers you, doesn't it? The idea of Immortals doing what Immortals do?"

Euphemisms. So much of the way the Immortals talked about themselves was couched in euphemisms. Henry wondered if they ever spoke directly about killing, or if they put distance in the language as a way to cope, in the same way that doctors spoke of their patients by their conditions. He'd spent enough time with Richie and Father Liam to know that they felt empathy and guilt as deeply as he did. For those Immortals, learning to kill without losing their souls would be essential. He could understand how the verbal distance worked and would be a hypocrite to say he wasn't guilty of the same thing when it came to his work as a medical examiner, though there, at least, he was working with those who were already dead and wasn't himself responsible for causing their death.

"I would be lying if I said it didn't," Henry answered. It went deeper than that, though, and he got up to empty out the teapot and move the service away while he worked through how to explain it. "Were it only the Immortals involved, I could compartmentalize." He thought. This was the first time he'd been confronted with the evidence of the Immortals 'doing what they did.' It was entirely possible that he wouldn't be able to compartmentalize if saw one of the Immortals he knew, and counted as a friend, killing. But that wasn't the issue now. Inevitably, it would be someday, but it wasn't now. "When our perp killed the Watcher, he—"

"Left the Game," Matt finished, supplying the explanation that Henry had given Jo. "You think he should be arrested and tried according to mortal laws because he took a mortal life. I agree."

"You do?"

Matt nodded once. "If it worked. Do you think that mortal laws can provide him with justice? Life in prison doesn't hold much threat when you're going to outlive your jailors."

Henry conceded that point with a nod of his own. "However, the processes of the legal system aren't merely about punishing the criminal. They are also about providing justice to the victims and their loved ones."

"Do you think the Watchers are unaware of the risks involved in what they do?" Matt countered. "They are not entirely innocent victims."

"Nor are their families undeserving of closure. Jacob McPhee was married. He has a family out there who deserve to know that his death was not in vain and that his killer will not go unpunished." Henry folded his hands, certain that he'd effectively made his case. He was enjoying the verbal riposte, and had half-way managed to forget that this was not an entirely hypothetical argument.

Matt steepled his fingers and pressed them briefly to his lips. "How about this: We play a game." His eyes flicked to the chess board. "Winner gets first crack at pursuing his brand of justice."

In his more than two hundred years of life, Henry had spent a great deal of time playing chess and studying strategies. He liked to think that he'd become an exemplary player. He was certainly better than Father Liam who was seventy years yet his senior. While he didn't know how old Matt really was, between his mannerisms and his arrogance, Henry had the sense that Matt was on the young side. Plus, there was his comment about not having played recently. "All right," Henry agreed. He resumed his seat and settled in for what was bound to be a short game. He was white, so he went first. "Your move."

Matt studied the board, then looked up at Henry. "What do pawns do, again?"


	5. Chapter 5

Jo showed up at Henry's apartment the next night with an armful of white cartons and a brainful of questions. "Dinner," she stated, dumping the Chinese food on the kitchen table. "I hope you didn't already have plans."

"As a matter of fact, I didn't," Henry answered. "Abe had a date tonight. And I...was rather hoping that you would come over."

"That's it? You were _hoping_? Telephones have been a thing for over a century, Henry. You have a cell phone now; you could even learn to text. It's the way most of us moderns communicate things like dinner plans these days, you know."

He flashed her a sad smile. "I thought you could use some space after our last discussion. I know it's a lot to take in."

Ignoring him, she circled around to the far side of the table, pulled open the lids on two of the boxes, then frowned at the contents like she couldn't remember ordering them. Wan cheeks and dark bags under her eyes spoke of a sleepless night, though her jeans and turtleneck sweater were clean and unwrinkled. Henry felt slovenly by comparison in the now-mussed dress shirt and suit pants he'd been wearing all day. "It is a lot to take in," she agreed. Circling back around, she leaned a hip against the table. "I've accepted that the law isn't perfect and that what people do and why they do it can be open for interpretation. Listening to Sean prepare for any one of his cases drove that point home. But this—" She threw her hands up.

Henry nodded and made a soft noise that he hoped would show he was listening without seeking to interrupt. He'd had a sleepless night of his own after Matt left, one where he'd hashed through everything he knew and tried to follow it to its logical conclusions.

"What I don't understand," Jo continued, "is how this whole thing could have been taking place under our noses all this time and _no one noticed_." Jo's voice was heavy with self-doubt; could she really be the caliber of detective she thought she was if she'd missing something as ostentatious as the evidence of Immortal fights? "So I went digging through the unsolveds. The digital files only go back about fifteen years and I didn't have time to go dig through the old paper archives."

While she was talking, Henry retrieved a couple plates from the cupboard and set them on the table. Serving spoons, a knife, and a pair of scissors were next. The food's scent filled the kitchen and would have had his mouth watering if not for the tight knot in his stomach at what he imagined Jo was leading up to.

"Henry, there was nothing," she said. "No mysterious beheadings, no property damage that fit the description of what we saw, no reports of multiple lightning strikes. We haven't seen it because it hasn't been happening here."

"Nothing?" He paused with a scoopful of rice halfway to his plate. "You're sure?" How could the Immortals have been so careful about covering their tracks and then get so sloppy? What had changed?

"So then I called one of my friends who works in Jersey and had her take a look through their records. She found three possibles in the last five years. I'm having her send the files over so I can take a closer look at them. Are you just going to stand there?"

Realizing that he'd been frozen in thought, Henry finished tapping the rice onto his plate, then added a scoop to Jo's plate. "Do you think there's a cover up?" he asked. Father Liam had said as much. If one was going on, that meant that there was Immortal somewhere high up in the NYPD hierarchy. Possibly more than one. Curious how people who were so intent on killing each other could also work so hard to protect each other. Self-interest was certainly a motivating factor, but the amount of cooperation it would take to effectively create and maintain a cover-up over so much time and across an entire world spoke to a greater concern than that.

"Either that, or it really isn't happening here," she said.

Henry knew which option he preferred. "Have you received any indication that the case should not be investigated?" He'd almost advised her to lose the file herself, and he might have if he thought there was any chance she'd follow through. While she was willing to cover up his involvement in situations where his presence—or lack thereof—couldn't be adequately explained, suggesting that she actively ignore certain crimes was the same as asking her to become a criminal, and he knew better.

Jo shook her head. "Not yet. So far, it's all business as usual, except for the part where our one good lead was a dead end." She finished dishing up, then grabbed a couple bottles of beer from the fridge. She didn't get to choose her cases, of course. If word came down that an investigation was being called off or moved to a different jurisdiction, she'd be expected to let it go. "What's this?" She'd been turning back toward the table when her eye landed on an item that Henry had set on the counter when he got home the previous night. Lucas's video tape. She picked it up, trading it for the plates and bottles. Her fingers skimmed over the picture of the sword that adorned the worn cardboard cover. Flipping it over, she read the blurb on the back.

Henry saw her face redden, her jaw harden as she fought off her instinctive betrayal. "Jo," he said. His next words were almost "I can explain," but he held them back for fear that saying them would guarantee that she'd leave before he could follow through. "You're not the first person to find out about them."

She met his eye, and he saw how finely she was balanced on the edge of believing him versus accusing him of insanity. He'd hoped to never again have a woman he loved think him insane, and it suddenly became very important to him that she understand, for his sake, not theirs.

"The case you're on is real," Henry said, "and everything I've told you about it is real. The movie was an attempt to give people an excuse for thinking otherwise." The plate was warm in his hands and the scent of the lo mein wafted up enticingly, but Henry was too intent on watching to see which way Jo decided to remember that the food was a favorite and he'd been hungry only moments before.

"Have you watched it?" she asked.

Henry shook his head. "No."

"Not ever?"

"I swear that I'd never heard of this particular movie until Lucas mentioned it."

Her mouth scrunched in thought and she read the blurb again. "Then let's put it on. You up for dinner and a movie?" She smiled. It was hesitant, but real.

Anything he said next would probably be the wrong thing, so Henry decided to say what he wanted. "Detective Martinez, are you asking me out?"

"Actually, Doctor Morgan. I think it would be better if we stayed in. I assume you have a VCR?" She tucked the video under her arm and re-gathered her food. "Wait, I know this one: You not only have a VCR, but you've never bothered to upgrade to a DVD player."

Henry felt a wry grin tug at the corner of his mouth. "Well, Abe insisted on getting a DVD player a few years ago. He said that just because I'm stuck in the past, that's no reason to keep him there with me. I, however, wouldn't let him throw out the VHS player. It's practically an antique, you know."

As they headed into the living room, Henry felt lighter than he had in months. Jo hadn't come around to believing him yet, but she was finally willing to listen.

* * *

Jo curled into Henry's arm on the couch as the credits started to roll, a pose that belied the tension that Henry could feel thrumming through her. " _What_ was that?"

Henry, for his part, still hadn't decided how to feel. "It was either a documentary that was playing loosely with the source material, or it was a piece of fiction that got alarmingly close to the truth," he answered. "Some of it was patently made up, like Connor's ability to breathe under water. I have it on good authority that drowning is drowning." He'd drowned enough times that his chest seized up with a sympathetic ache at the memory. If the movie had been made by an Immortal, he understood why that detail would have been altered. Wish fulfillment came in many forms.

"What about the Prize?"

Ultimate power, ultimate knowledge. None of the Immortals he knew had mentioned that as the goal to their Game. It could be more wish fulfillment. It could be speculation. It could be the kind of thing that just didn't come up in conversation. "I don't know," he answered honestly. A goal like the Prize didn't have to be true; all it would take was a handful of Immortals who believed it and acted accordingly. Pascal's Wager for the un-aging set. Henry shifted his arm so that it settled more comfortably on Jo's shoulders.

They'd turned the lights off for the movie, leaving only the glow of the TV screen and the ambient light from outside to see by. The dishes had been carted back to the kitchen some time before, leaving only the now empty beer bottles to be dealt with.

"Henry," Jo spoke, her tone suddenly wary. "You're not part of that. Are you?"

He hadn't considered that she could view this movie night as a backhanded way of introducing her to truths he'd withheld. "No," he assured her. When she didn't respond, he touched her cheek, turning her so that she had to see his eyes. "No. My immortality is something different."

Some of the tension bled out of her. He leaned in to kiss her, to remind her how much he'd trusted her and what it meant to him that she'd been able to see him for who he was. She'd needed that kiss as much as he. Her lips parted on contact, her hand crept up to cup the back of his head and pull him in close.

Eventually he drew back to rest his forehead on hers. Her breath, like his, came short, and even in the dim light he could see that her face was flushed. "I wouldn't have kept it from you this long if I were," he said.

"I had to check," she answered. "I don't know if—I don't know if I could live with that."

"And now you have to," he responded, half under his breath. Now that she'd been convinced, there was no way to take the knowledge back. His conversation with Matt had been turning over in his head, and he was beginning to see that what had seemed so clear-cut to him as a person who greatly respected the processes of the law wasn't that simple at all for those who had to be outside it.

Jo pushed away, then, rising to her feet. "They kill people, Henry. Premeditated murder. How am I supposed to know that that's going on out there—" She waved a hand toward the window and the city that lay beyond it— "and not try to stop it?"

Henry bowed his head. He couldn't have expected her to have any other response to learning about the Game, yet now he had to convince her why it wasn't the right one. "Do you think you can?" he asked her. "Let's say that what's going on out there is anything like the movie showed. Are you and Hanson prepared to take on people who have dozens or hundreds of years training to kill people with swords? Can the department provide the training? How do think Reece will respond when you tell her what you need?" He stood up and closed the distance between them, capturing her arms. "Jo, you're not immortal. You're not their kind of immortal or my kind."

"I still have to try."

Someday he would have to lose her, the way he'd lost Abigail, the way he'd lose Abe. But that was supposed to be a distant abstract. Unable to stand the sudden awareness of Jo's mortality, Henry pulled her close and buried her head in his chest. Her hair that tickled his chin smelled like flowers and her skin like vanilla bodywash. She didn't wear perfume.

"Why? Who does it help?" That was the question all the others dead-ended on.

Jo's head tilted up just as her phone buzzed. She reached for it automatically. As a cop, she was never truly off duty.

"That's funny," she said, reading the text that had come in. "Unknown sender."

"What does it say?" Henry craned his neck, trying to read the backlit letters upside down. The phone was tilted so that all he could make out were that both letters and numbers were included.

She read off a place and time, then shook her head. "I know where that is. It's not the kind of place anyone should go to after dark."

The phone buzzed again with a new message. This time Henry could read it. Capital letters. Multiple exclamation marks.

BE THERE!

* * *

Henry, of course, tried to talk her out of going. Jo tried to talk him out of going. In the end, they pulled up the abandoned (always abandoned) warehouse and squealed to a stop moments before Hanson arrived in his own car. The parking lot was dark save for a single security light in the middle that illuminated only a dull yellow circle at its base and the yet shining headlights of the two cars.

"What's he doing here?" Hanson asked as soon as he saw Henry step out of the vehicle.

Jo shot her partner a weary look. "Next time, you can talk him out of it." Turning to Henry, she pointed back at the car and said, "And you can sit right there until I come back out. Do not follow me." They all knew the command was futile, but Henry gamely went along with sliding back into the passenger seat and at least waiting until the two detectives had arrived at the warehouse door before sliding right back out and following them around the side of the building.

They were several minutes early, yet the lock on the warehouse's side door had already been broken off. From within came a yell, a jolt of noise through the compressed silence that always filled in those spaces that people had stopped using.

Hanson pushed the door open and led the way through, his gun at the ready. Jo followed, also ready. The message had given no indication of what they were going to find, or if they were going to find anything, so they moved slowly, carefully, ready to announce their presence but not leading with it.

Inside the first door was a small room with a bank of lockers along one wall and the rusted remains of a time clock on another. A second door greeted them. Its lock was also sheared off.

Hanson glared once at Henry who whispered back, "Pretend I'm not here," and then he pushed the second door open. The overhead lights were on and casting their harsh white glare through the room. Strange how a building so long abandoned had working electricity. Henry bet that it also had running water and working heat, though the way his breath puffed as he breathed made him guess that it wasn't being used.

They were greeted with the sight of a burly man with curling brown hair and a wild peppered beard launching himself at a second person who ducked and rolled out of the way. The burly man gripped a curved sword in his right hand which he swung as he again yelled out. What he said was not English, yet was clearly a swear.

The second man kipped to his feet, then threw up his hands in classic surrender position and said, "I'm unarmed." At this angle, his face was visible. No one was surprised to see that it was Matt. He still wore his jeans and his thick sweater, but his long coat was nowhere to be seen.

The burly man yelled something else and charged again.

Matt again rolled out of the way. When he came up, he was standing in front of Jo. "It's not a fair fight," he told her. "You can interrupt any time you want." Then he dove backwards, sliding under the swing that should have connected with his shoulders had he still been standing there.

Jo made eye contact with Hanson, and in mirrored movements they pointed their guns at the burly man and yelled, "Police! Drop the sword."

At a guess, the man didn't speak English. Possibly, he didn't know what guns were, either. Hearing the order, he took a running start toward Jo, clearly intent on impaling her the way he had impaled the Watcher. That's when Matt stopped dodging and neatly, expertly, stepped in and disarmed the man and knocked his legs out from under him. The sword clanged onto the cement floor, and Matt brushed off his hands, and walked out of the warehouse as if he'd not just been fighting for his life a moment ago.

Jo snagged Henry's arm as he tried to follow and pulled him to a stop. "You're going to explain this," she said. Her gun was pointed at the fallen Immortal, who was struggling to regain his breath.

Henry opened his mouth, and Jo cut him off with a sharp tap on his lips.

"No, it's not," she said.

Hanson resolutely did not look at either of them, choosing instead to go pick up the sword with a cloth he'd pulled from his pocket and drag it out of anyone's reach.

Henry's smile was pained, and he pulled away rather than admit that she might be asking something of him he couldn't fulfill.

He caught up with Matt, who was lounging against the corrugated wall outside the door, buffing his fingernails on the sleeve of his sweater. He wasn't even breathing hard. Henry took in the pose, contrasted with the fighter he'd seen inside and the other glimpses he'd seen of the man over their acquaintance, and found that he only had one thing to say. "I don't understand."

"I'd think it was obvious," Matt answered. "You won, so now you've had your crack at catching the bad guy your way."

From the warehouse came the rhythm of Hanson reading out the Miranda rights broken by the scuffle of someone who didn't want to be, being forced to his feet.

"How did you know how to find him?"

"Kostya?" Matt said, giving a name to the unknown Immortal. "From his Watcher. Good thing he has one who knows how to stay out of sight."

Of course, Henry thought. Two Immortals would mean two Watchers. As they'd only found the body of one, it stood to reason that the second one was either still alive or had been much more carefully disposed of. He was heartened to hear that the former was true. "You talked to his Watcher? I thought that wasn't allowed? Where is he?" Henry asked. He peered into the copious shadows but saw no hint of another person. Maybe he and the detectives had scared him away.

"He's at a bar about five blocks from here. I bought him a bottle of vodka and told him to get himself warm. Cold night, isn't it?" Matt rubbed his hands together, then held them in front of his mouth and puffed on them as if to emphasize the chill.

Two Immortals would mean two Watchers, Henry thought again. If Kostya's was at the bar, then: "Where's your Watcher?"

Matt shrugged dismissively. "I'm not in the habit of being Watched. Brings up too many memories."

It was an odd answer and Henry had no idea what he was supposed to make of it. Were Immortals really given a choice? Or had this Immortal killed off his Watcher a long time ago? If he had, then why was he so bothered by someone else killing Watchers? Henry gave his head a shake to clear his thoughts. All that mattered right now was that there were no loose ends. In fact, he realized, the whole thing was too neat, too...planned. The location, the late night timing which would prevent inopportune interruptions, the indisposition of the Watcher, the direct summons to Jo. Henry had won the chess game, and yet—

He had a flash of Matt sitting at the chess board, playing with the pieces and playing with him. 'What do the pawns do, again?' he'd asked, right before he moved them all into place.

"You set this all up."

Matt appeared to contemplate that for a second, then made a face like he wasn't convinced. "If you say so." He puffed on his hands once more, then shoved them in his jeans' pockets. "Do you think your detective would give me a ride back to the dojo? I don't want to walk home without my sword. It's dangerous out there, you know."

They watched as Jo and Hanson escorted the now handcuffed Kostya out the door and into Hanson's car. "You'll want a Russian translator," Matt called after them. To Henry, he added, "A cultural translator will also help. Asshole doesn't know jack about the modern world. Somehow missed the lesson about not killing mortals, too."

Jo came over then with a satisfied smile on her face. "We got him. We got him holding the murder weapon and trying to use it again. Once we match him to the other victims, he doesn't stand a chance. This guy's going to go away for a long time."

Matt looked at her, brow furrowed and head tilted as if he wanted to ask her a personal question. Only a beat passed and his normal expression resumed, the thread of the conversation being picked up like the dip outside it had never occurred. "First you have to see that he gets to trial."

Jo's smile faded and she looked at Matt like she hoped he'd give her another reason to arrest him. "Is that a threat?"

He stared off toward the security light as he answered, "Nope. Wouldn't think of it. How about a ride?"

"I'm going to need a statement, first," Jo responded. She pulled out her notebook and pen and got ready to write.

Matt cast an appeal to Henry, and Henry could shrug; he really couldn't stop Jo from doing her job. He could only hope that the seed he'd planted earlier would grow into a different understanding of how to do it, for her own safety.


	6. Epilogues

Henry almost managed to be surprised when the transport van pulled into the morgue two days later with the body of a prisoner who had died during a cafeteria brawl. He pulled back the sheet to see the Russian Immortal lying pale and dead on the gurney with a plastic knife shoved through his heart.

"Yikes," Lucas said. "That must have taken some serious arm strength. Either that or our guy stood there are _let_ himself get stabbed." He made a face and shook his head. "But who would be crazy enough to do that?"

The man's expression was serene. Henry had never died by having a plastic knife shoved through his ribcage, but he still knew it would have been intensely painful. It would have taken a great deal of willpower not to fight back. The only way he could have died without screaming would be if he'd invited it. What Matt had been trying to explain clicked into place. Henry had used basically the same trick once when he'd escaped from the asylum. This version had extra steps, which meant a lot more that could potentially go wrong, yet it achieved the same end.

Henry pulled the sheet back up over the body. "Someone who saw dying as a way out," he answered. "Put him in the cooler. I'll give him due attention later. I rather think that Detective Martinez should see this one. And, Lucas—" He stopped the assistant with an upraised hand— "Don't touch the knife."

* * *

"I can't believe it was that easy," Jo commented. "So all he had to do was die and now he's off scot free?" She handed over the cup of coffee she'd brought for Henry, then took a sip of her own.

The body that had brought them here had been strangled. Just strangled. There were no swords, no knives, no wrist tattoos for secret societies, no property destruction. The killer had left the body on a park bench with fingerprints everywhere, then walked away through wet grass and mud, leaving distinct shoe prints behind.

Cautiously, Henry inquired, "What are you going to do about it?"

"Do? Henry, the guy died. There's nothing I _can_ do." She gestured with her cup at the body on the bench. "Now this murder, I can solve. In fact, I think I'll solve it today. Wrap it up in a neat little bow and put the file on the Lieutenant's desk so I can get back to work on my other open cases. There are a lot of families out there who need some closure." She saw that Hanson had finished speaking with the person who had reported the body and started over to talk to him. Under her breath, she muttered, "I can't believe Kostya got away with it."

As Henry watched her go, he started making plans. He'd made a lot of decisions in his long life on impulse, some he'd lived to regret and some he'd lived to cherish. Having already brought Jo this far into a world with immortals, and Immortals, he decided that she needed to know everything he knew about it.

He wrapped his hands around the cup and let the warmth seep into him, offsetting the morning chill.

* * *

The cold snap had ended by the weekend, with the temperatures rebounding into a comparatively balmy low 50s. Henry and Jo still wore their coats as they exited the subway station and headed toward the church, though they were unbuttoned. On some level, Henry suspected that his coat was open so he wouldn't overheat, and Jo's was open so she could reach her gun easier. He didn't ask.

"So he's a priest," Jo said. It wasn't a question, so much as an attempt to get her head around a troublesome concept. "He's a priest who, in between saying Mass and taking confession, goes out and chops people's heads off?" That was a question.

Henry chuckled, and instantly wished he'd hadn't when he caught the hurt look that Jo flashed him. She thought he was laughing at her. "I'm sorry. Liam is...an aberration." He tried to imagine the priest in a fight with Kostya, imagine him performing any of the moves he'd seen Matt do, and couldn't. "He's decided not to play the Game."

"I thought you said that that wasn't an option?"

"As I understand it: It's an option in the same way that it's an option not to look both ways before crossing the street."

"Oh." Jo looked down, gaze fixed on her feet, and wrapped herself in her thoughts while they walked.

The church was coming up, and Henry found his own thoughts tugged toward wondering what would happen if Liam were tempted—or forced—to rejoin the Game. Would he do it? Would he be able to? Regardless, he'd have to leave the priesthood. All the scandals the Catholic church had found itself mired in over the past couple decades would've had to have made them even less willing to tolerate law breaking. Unless...Liam had suggested that Immortals worked in the upper hierarchy of law enforcement. Could the same be true in the Vatican? Now there was a thought: a true Immortal conspiracy.

"How many of them do you think there are?" Jo asked, breaking into his thoughts. "Matt, Liam, Kostya, the John Doe." She ticked the names off on her fingers as she spoke, concluding by holding up the unnamed thumb and waggling it in invitation for Henry to supply an answer. Her brow creased with another thought. "And do you think they're all male?"

 _Richie_ Henry mentally added to Jo's list. He still didn't know Richie's status, and he wasn't willing to out his friend without at least ascertaining that. "How many? I don't know." _There are actually quite a lot of us_ , Richie had said. With five in New York City alone, plus the few others whom he'd heard mentioned and a couple of other clues that had been dropped, he could only guess what 'a lot' meant. "I'd say scores. Perhaps hundreds around the world." Recalling one of those clues, he added, "One of whom is a woman named Amanda."

"Hundreds," Jo repeated, shocked.

"Astounding, isn't it?"

A shout interrupted whatever response Jo was going to make. As one, they swiveled toward the noise, craning to peer over the brick wall that bordered the sidewalk. The wall enclosed the church's parochial school. Henry had walked past the grounds dozens of times since he'd started coming to meet Liam and had never done more than look through the entrance gate on those days when it was open for the children. This being a Saturday, the grounds should have been closed and empty.

A flurry of noises followed, an extended scuffle, then the meaty thunk of one body slamming into another. Pausing only to glance at each other—a quick, and affirmative, check whether to intervene—Jo and Henry hustled to the gate.

It swung open under Henry's touch, the lock hanging loose.

They stepped through just as one of the trespassers said, "You call that an offense?"

"Hey!" Jo shouted. Her hand had slipped inside her coat toward her gun, though she hadn't drawn it yet.

One of the men had just stepped off to shoot the basketball in his hand. He started to turn at her shout just as the other man ducked in to try to block the shot. The ball flew off uncontrolled, bounced off the edge of the backboard, hit the ground, then rolled off toward the other side of the lot where the asphalt gave way to a field of woodchips, and the basketball court gave way to a complex of tubes and swaying bridges that made up the younger children's playground. Losing his balance, the shooter crashed down hard on the asphalt.

The defender was momentarily nonplussed at which of the events he was supposed to respond to first. He collected himself quickly, though, and stepped around the fallen man. "Henry!" he called out, a little too brightly. "And you must be Jo."

"Liam," Henry responded with a tip of his hat.

Liam had tried, but his moment of indecision was just long enough for Henry and Jo to see that the other man had skinned his forearm badly when he hit the ground. Only as he started to rise, blood already welling in the wound, did Henry see past the black bandana wrapped across the man's head to the person underneath. When he did, he felt a tension deep inside untwist.

"Richie!" Henry took a step forward, sure that he had to be seeing through hope colored glasses. As much as he'd been trying not to believe that Richie had been killed, at some level, he'd started to accept that he'd soon learn otherwise.

A flare of panic crossed Richie's face, and he scrambled to his feet. Thinking fast, he yanked the bandana off his head and began trying to wind it around his arm. The cloth was sweat-soaked and probably filthy with road grime, an unsanitariness that made Henry wince. "Uh, hey," Richie answered. His eyes flicked to Jo, then back to Henry. "What're you guys—"

"That looked like a nasty fall," Jo interrupted. "Are you OK?" Someone who didn't know her might think she was asking only out of concern, but Henry saw a deeper layer to the question—a warranted layer, because Richie couldn't have been acting guiltier than if he really had been caught with his hand in the jewelry case.

"He's fine," Liam responded. "It was just a scrape. He only needs to catch his breath." He hadn't looked at the wound at all. Taking a step closer, he further positioned himself in front of Richie. "Did I lose track of time? I haven't been keeping you waiting, have I?" He glanced at the pale line on his skin where the watch normally was and let out a nervous chuckle. "Watches don't do much good when you take them off. I hope I haven't inconvenienced you."

Henry consulted his pocket watch, then held it up as if Liam could see the face from where he stood. "We're running early, and it's no inconvenience. If I'd known Richie was—"

Their talking hadn't distracted Jo, who was now trying to get past Liam. As if unaware that he was doing so, he kept drifting into her path. She wasn't being aggressive; someone who didn't know her might not see the determination in her movements.

Henry observed the uncharacteristic dance: Jo took a step to the left; Liam appeared in her path; Richie eased back another step as if to slip away without being noticed. He knew what he was seeing, but not why, and then it clicked. Richie was trying to hide his injured arm from Jo, a textbook case of shutting the barn door too late, which he was doing because…. "It's all right, Rich," he spoke up. "She knows."

"You told her already?" Liam asked, his confusion evident, at the same time as an equally baffled Richie, with one end of the bandana clenched in his teeth and the other draped over his injured arm, asked, "Knows what?"

Ah, that was the disconnect. Henry had called Liam and explained that Jo would need answers Henry couldn't provide. What had seemed pointless early in the case became essential after he'd hid with her in his office late one night and let her witness Kostya's resurrection. With as immersed as he'd been in the case and in trying to get both Jo and himself through it, Henry had neglected to mention that Jo wasn't coming into the conversation cold. No one had, apparently, mentioned anything to Richie.

"She was one of the detectives on the case," Henry pointed out. "I had to tell her." He spread his hands in silent apology for his oversight. "Detective Jo Martinez, this is Father Liam Riley—"

"Bennett," Liam corrected. "In this lifetime."

"—and Mister Richard Ryan," Henry continued, indicating the people as he named them.

"Jensen," Richie replied, and glint in his eye added, "In this lifetime," in a decent approximation of Liam's Irish accent. "Nice to meet you." Now that there was nothing to be gained by it, Richie eased out from behind Liam and held out his hand to shake. Aside from the shadow of blood that darkened the blond hair along his forearm, there was no sign of any injury. Henry's eyebrow quirked in curiosity; he knew the other Immortals also had advanced healing, but he hadn't seen it in action since that first day, when he hadn't been paying attention. "Detective? Sounds like I missed some excitement. What case?"

"Didn't you get my messages?" Henry asked.

"Uh, no." Richie rubbed the back of his neck. "My phone kinda got destroyed. I haven't had a chance to replace it yet."

With a sudden sharpening of his eyes that smoothed the fine lines at the corners, Liam sent a silent question to Richie. It wasn't a language Henry had fully learned to read, though he thought he could guess: Did it happen in a fight?

Richie understood completely. "Not like that," he answered, confirming Henry's guess. "I was riding. Hit a pothole wrong or something and dumped the bike. The phone didn't make it."

Jo had been inspecting Richie's arm as well as she could without grabbing it. At his story, she jumped in with, "You crashed a motorcycle and the only damage was to your phone?"

"Well, no," Richie admitted with a glance at Henry to get the go ahead before he continued. "I also broke my leg and collarbone, but, uh, those healed."

The crash couldn't have been more than a week ago, and Richie, now standing around in jeans and a sweat-stained grey t-shirt that bore the logo of the parochial school across his chest, was obviously not in a cast or incapacitated by injury in any way.

Between what she'd seen, what she'd heard, and what she already knew, Jo reached the obvious conclusion, no matter how much more difficult that was in the bright afternoon light, standing on a children's playground where normalcy and the world's adherence to rules she thought she fully understood was practically an edict. "You're one of them. One of those Immortals."

The corner of Richie's mouth quirked up in a grin that shaved another five years off his apparent age. "Guilty as charged," he answered. "And that's a phrase I never thought I'd voluntarily say."

"You're so young," she protested.

"Yeah, I was." Richie shrugged. "Hey, at least I made it to adulthood before getting killed. Lotta people were convinced that wasn't going to happen. On the plus side: I'm never going to get wrinkles or go bald." He grinned again, bigger this time, obviously aware of what a kid-thing such a perspective on age was.

When Henry had first met him, Richie had been naked, dead, and burned beyond recognition. For at that one could learn from corpses, Henry rarely gave much thought to the people they'd once been. In that form, Richie had been a piece in a case, little more. Later, Henry had seen him desperate, afraid, and lonely—all states that highlighted youth. He'd also seen him determined, heroic, and dangerous—states that disguised it. In the months since, as Henry had come to know the man inside, he'd stopped seeing the adolescent face. Right now, it was all he could see, and a detail that Jo was visibly struggling with.

With effort, she tore her attention over to Liam, took in his exertion-disheveled hair and equally sweat-dampened clothes. He was wearing slacks and a black version of the same shirt Richie had on that clung to his sides. His work boots had their original nylon laces, Henry noted, while Richie's boots did not. He didn't know why that detail jumped out at him as significant, only that it had. "And you…" she said, "are a priest."

"You noticed that, did you?" Liam quipped.

She gave a quick shake of her head that brushed her hair over her shoulders. "You don't look immortal. Neither of you do."

Henry tried to imagine what she had seen in Kostya, in Matt, that she was comparing against the two people standing before her. Maybe it was the swords. Maybe it was a darkness in their expressions. Both of those were superficial. Certainly she knew that an inability to age and die didn't come with an external identifier. "Neither do I," he commented.

Richie tensed, his blue eyes widening in silent alarm. "No," he mouthed.

The warning was strange; no one in their quartet was unaware of his status, and he'd certainly mentioned Jo often enough in his get-togethers with both Liam and Richie that they should know that the woman here was the same detective. In fact, he specifically remembered telling Richie that he'd confided in Jo. Liam had heard the whole story after pulling him from the river on their first meeting. Richie, of course, had heard it after confiding about his own immortality. So, why…

With a tick of his head toward the school building, Richie managed to convey that they weren't alone. The building was too far away for a casual eavesdropper to overhear anything, which meant anyone inside would need surveillance equipment. Henry's eyes dropped shut as he got the message. Of all the facts of his immortal friends' lives, this one refused to sink in. They all had Watchers, and for some reason that they would _definitely_ have to discuss later, Richie wanted to keep Henry's condition secret from them.

"...just people," he heard Liam explaining to Jo, neither of them aware of the aside between Richie and Henry. "We're young and old, female and male, good and evil, and every place on the continuum between."

In a burst of deductive reasoning, Jo put together what Henry should have. "You were running away," she said to Richie, who gave a small jump on being addressed. "When you crashed your bike, it's because you were trying to get away from Kostya." She turned to Henry. "The John Doe was young, too. I mean, he looked young. Two people aren't enough to establish a clear pattern, but circumstantially…." She trailed off as she reached the end of what she understood for sure.

"Someone was hunting you?" Liam asked Richie in a tone that was disturbingly conversational.

Richie rolled his eyes and let out a drawled, "Yeah," that sounded too complacent for the question. Raking his fingers through his sweat-dampened curls, he added, "I must look like an easy target, ya know."

"Obviously you're not," Liam stated. "And since you're back, he must be out of the picture. Who got him?"

"Not me," Richie said again, and Liam gave a slight nod showing that he'd figured that out already. "Friend of mine. I guess he's a friend, anyway. I've known him awhile and he's not a headhunter. I'll bring him by sometime. Introduce you two." His shoulder tipped up in a slight shrug. "He used to live in Paris; you...might...already know each other," he said, speaking slower with each word as if that fact was a burden. He bit his lip and visibly pulled himself back together. "At least I know you two won't go after each other. Sucks losing my friends that way."

Liam fingered the silver cross around his neck before quickly arriving at a decision. "Should you ever need it, my church is at your disposal. Any time, day or night. I'll make sure my colleagues know to welcome you, regardless of whether I'm there."

It was a surreal exchange, and Jo threw a helpless look at Henry as if he could further help her make sense of it. While more prepared for the content than she was, he still felt like the conversation was one he'd've been better off not being privy to.

"Hunting?" Jo repeated. "'Got him'? You mean killed him. He wanted to murder you, he did kill someone, and someone killed him, and you talk about it like it's no big deal."

"It's the Game," Richie responded. "And, thanks, man," he said to Liam. "Sanctuary on Holy Ground is...wow! I mean, there's no shortage of cemeteries and churches in this city, but a place where I don't have to worry about getting arrested for trespassing or mugged for my shoes is incredible."

"You're Immortal and you're worried about getting mugged," Jo said, voice faint. _But not murder_ , Henry could hear her wanting to add.

"What's the saying?" Richie asked. "Worry about the things you can control? Besides, I hate shopping, especially for shoes." Lacing his fingers together, he pushed his hands over his head and stretched muscles that hadn't been warmed down properly. "Anyway, you play?" he asked, indicating the backboard over their heads and the chain net that dangled from it.

"Starting forward junior and senior years," Jo answered before turning suspicious. "Why?"

Henry braced himself for an analogy. Richie had helped him grasp the concept of their Game by likening it to war, but he failed to see how comparing it to a sport, a true recreational activity, would help Jo.

"How about a round? A little two-on-two?" Richie tucked the bandana into his pocket, neatly hiding the corner where blood stained the white pattern. She looked cautiously interested, so Richie pressed on: "Look, as much as I enjoy standing around having awkward conversations with people I've just met, I'd rather play, you know what I mean? You can ask your questions; we'll try to answer; and, uh, maybe we can manage to have a little fun. Whatd'ya say? Henry?"

Henry immediately glanced down at the oxford's he'd just polished that morning. "I'm afraid I'll have to defer as these are hardly appropriate shoes."

The new challenge on the table must have intrigued her because Jo's eyes lit up. "Oh, come on, Henry," she said, "if I can play in these—" she indicated the low-heeled boots that she wore—"you can play in those. Besides, he's right. This isn't official business, so let's not treat it like it is."

The last time Henry had touched a basketball, Abe had been in high school. He knew the rules, and had certainly seen enough pick-up games to understand what he was being invited to do, but the actual play would be beyond his skills. He also knew when he was defeated; Jo was increasingly having that effect on him. "Very well."

"Great!" Richie pumped his arm. "Coats can go over there." He pointed to the row of benches that marked the boundary between the basketball court and the strip of asphalt that encircled the school. His coat lay flat along the seat of one bench, out of immediate reach but still accessible. "I'll go get the ball." With that, he sauntered off toward the slide under which the ball had rolled.

While Jo took Henry's coat and hat over to the bench, Liam drew in close, intent on asking a question of his own.

"So, what did your conscience decide?" he inquired.

The collar of his shirt suddenly grew constrictive. Henry tugged at the top button while fighting the urge to study the cracks in the asphalt. He hadn't felt so much like a school boy since he'd been one. "I don't know," he admitted. "The city of New York hired me as medical examiner with the understanding that I would fulfill that charge to the best of my knowledge and ability..."

Liam made a small "go on" noise, encouraging, but not pressuring.

Continuing was not that easy, though. Henry had already broken the rules several times for his Immortal friends, and no doubt would choose to again. The need to cover up untimely resurrections was one he fully understood. Likewise, he saw the value in ignoring the felonies they routinely committed with their identity fraud and weapons violations. He could even accept the need to withhold the bigger picture of the Game from the police and other mortal authorities. Like it or not, the NYPD had neither the resources nor manpower to get involved, and trying would only get them hurt. Would only get _Jo_ hurt.

Beyond that, the ethics became disturbingly situational.

Jo had reached the bench. Henry saw her start to lay her armload down, stop. Freeing one hand, she reached for the lapel of Richie's jacket and folded it back to reveal the hilt of the sword inside. Her eyes tracked up to find its owner attempting to walk and spin the basketball on the tip of his finger at the same time, like any American teenage boy. Without a word, she restored the coverage, then dropped their own coats on top.

"I don't know," Henry repeated.

Liam rested a hand on his shoulder. "If you were part of my flock, I'd advise prayer to help you reach the right decision. Since you're not, may I suggest flowers and a weekend away?"

"What?"

"You're not in the Game," Liam replied. "Whatever decisions you make about that, we won't fault you. The Game is our burden, not yours. As for Jo—it's been awhile, but I seem to recall that flowers helped smooth a lot of bumps in relationships, and some time alone should help you figure out what's really important."

"Flowers?" Henry repeated.

"And a vacation."

Jo caught the ball that Richie tossed her, bounced it once, then shot it effortlessly through the hoop. The chains swayed and a flush of happiness spread across her cheeks. She clapped her hands once, inviting another try. "Come on, Henry. Get your butt out here."

He could do that. He could play some pick-up basketball, no matter how rusty his skills. He could do flowers and a trip and the re-establishing of a relationship he hoped to keep for a long time. And he could put his other issues on hold because there'd be time to deal with them later. For now, there were only friends, a wide-open afternoon, and a game he could enjoy.


End file.
